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$6.50 Vol. 23, No. 4 May 2015

Christopher Waddell Pixels vs. Papers Is the death of newsprint just media hype?

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

Adam Chapnick Why the liberal arts still pay

Suanne Kelman Defending jealousy

Joseph Heath Fairness without regulation

PLUS: non-fiction Linda Kay on dressing for utopia + David Layton on Chinese migrations + Joan Sangster on the Montreal massacre + Larry Krotz on importing capitalism + Michael Marrus on Jewish Poland + Janet Hepburn on freedom through Alzheimer’s + Ian Smillie on LGBT Namibia fiction Publications Mail Agreement #40032362 Jamie Zeppa reviews The Search for Heinrich Schlögel by Martha Baillie + Jack Kirchhoff Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to LRC, Circulation Dept. reviews Close to Hugh by Marina Endicott PO Box 8, Station K Toronto, ON M4P 2G1 poetry David Huebert + Basma Kavanagh + Jennifer Zilm NATIONAL BEST SELLER

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Vol. 23, No. 4 • May 2015 INTERIM EDITOR Mark Lovewell [email protected] 3 Arts Advantage 17 Stanza Is the Italian Word for Room MANAGING EDITOR Michael Stevens An essay A poem CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Adam Chapnick Jennifer Zilm Molly Peacock, Robin Roger, Anthony 6 Horror Undimmed 18 Impossible Journey Westell A review of “I Hate Feminists!” December A review of The Search for Heinrich Schlögel, by ASSOCIATE EDITOR 6, 1989, and Its Aftermath, by Mélissa Martha Baillie Judy Stoffman BlaisTranslated from French by Phyllis Aronoff Jamie Zeppa POETRY EDITOR Moira MacDougall and Howard Scott 19 Hugh Made Me Love You Joan Sangster COPY EDITOR A review of Close to Hugh, by Marina Endicott Madeline Koch 8 Short Skirts and Water Cures Jack Kirchhoff ONLINE EDITORS Diana Kuprel, Jack Mitchell, A review of Seeking Our Eden: The Dreams and 20 The Freedom of Alzheimer’s Migrations of Sarah Jameson Craig, by Joanne Donald Rickerd, C.M. A review of The Long Hello: Memory, My Findon PROOFREADERS Mother and Me, by Cathie Borrie Linda Kay Heather Schultz, Robert Simone, Rob Janet Hepburn Tilley, Jeannie Weese Irreversible RESEARCH 9 22 Trading Fair A review of Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on Rob Tilley A review of Constructing Private Governance: an Indigenous Frontier, by Tania Murray Li EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee and Larry Krotz Mohamed Huque, Gina Shin, Kristen Fisheries Certification, by Graeme Auld, and Scott 10 Paper Pusher Coffee, by Gavin Fridell DESIGN A review of Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of Joseph Heath James Harbeck the Death of Newspapers, by Marc Edge 24 Talk Therapy ADVERTISING/SALES Christopher Waddell Michael Wile A review of The Last Asylum: A Memoir of [email protected] Madness in Our Times, by Barbara Taylor 13 Born to Leave DIRECTOR, SPECIAL PROJECTS A review of Meet Me in Venice: A Chinese Kwame McKenzie Michael Booth Immigrant’s Journey from the Far East to the 26 Emblems of Adversity DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Faraway West, by Suzanne Ma, and Cultivating A review of Jewish Space in Contemporary Elizabeta Liguri´c Connections: The Making of Chinese Prairie Poland, by Erica Lehrer and Michael Meng, PUBLISHERS Canada, by Alison R. Marshall Alastair Cheng editors David Layton [email protected] Michael R. Marrus Helen Walsh Sabotage [email protected] 16 29 Broken Promised Land A poem A review of Namibia’s Rainbow Project: Gay BOARD OF DIRECTORS Basma Kavanagh Mark Lovewell, Don McCutchan, Jack Rights in an African Nation, by Robert Lorway Mintz, Trina McQueen Ian Smillie 16 Ruins Walk, Louisbourg ADVISORY COUNCIL A poem 30 Green Eyes Michael Adams, Ronald G. Atkey, P.C., David Huebert Q.C., Alan Broadbent, C.M., Chris Ellis, A review of Jealousy, by Peter Toohey James Gillies, C.M., Carol Hansell, 16 Answering Rilke’s Sonnets to Suanne Kelman Donald Macdonald, P.C., C.C., Susan Orpheus 32 Letters and Responses Reisler, Grant Reuber, O.C., Don Rickerd, A poem C.M., Rana Sarkar, Mark Sarner, Bernard Susan Walsh, Mark Bourrie, Alfred Schiff, Reed Scowen David Huebert Hermida, Matthew Kleban POETRY SUBMISSIONS For poetry submission guidelines, please see reviewcanada.ca. LRC design concept by Jackie Young/INK Founded in 1991 by P.A. Dutil The LRC is published 10 times a year by the Literary Review of Canada Charitable Organization.

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2 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ESSAY Arts Advantage Why enrolling in the liberal arts is smarter than you think. Adam Chapnick

ccording to Statistics Canada, over the last 20 years the number of employed A25- to 34-year-olds who have completed a university degree has risen dramatically. Among men, the number has increased from 17 to 27 per- cent. The gains among women have been even greater, from 19 to 40 percent. This past September, however, came a pivotal shift, at least in the province of Ontario. The num- ber of 18-year-olds enrolling in the province’s universities fell by more than 2000, or 2.1 percent. What’s more, the decrease was hardly consistent across the disciplines. Many subjects saw increases, which were needed to compensate for the decline go … into trades or technical vocations as opposed Data from outside Canada are similarly hope- of 2,600 in the humanities and social sciences—the to professions are somehow pursuing a second- ful. According to the American Academy of Arts so-called liberal arts. class form of education,” he says. “That is a terrible and Sciences, liberal arts graduates who complete In Ontario, at least, for the first time in as long lie.” graduate degrees earn, on average, twice the as anyone can remember, fewer high school gradu- Still others, including, if some reports are to be median salary of Americans with a high school edu- ates seem to be choosing universities—or at least believed, Canada’s prime minister, have suggested cation or less. And a 2014 Gallup poll of more than universities that will accept them—and more and that students should simply make better choices 30,000 U.S. college graduates indicated that those more are rejecting a liberal arts education. about the degrees that they pursue. Engineers have who majored in the arts were more likely to be Demographers point to a shrinking cohort of jobs, such thinking seems to imply, so why study engaged in their work and satisfied with their lives 18-year-olds as one element of this phenomenon, sociology? than those who studied science or engineering. but others suggest that universities, and particu- The data tell a much more nuanced story, one If the future replicates the recent past, then larly liberal arts programs, appear to be poorly that reveals a profound difference between the overqualification may also be a temporary prob- designed to meet the labour market needs of the achievements of Canadians with a genuine liberal lem. Statistics Canada reports that older bachelor’s 21st century. arts education versus those who have merely met graduates are far less likely to be overqualified Indeed, as one report has pointed out, the pro- the minimum standards to obtain a degree. than younger ones, reinforcing the argument that portion of post-secondary graduates working in Although the gap has been narrowing, post- a liberal arts degree might not be the most efficient jobs where they earn half the median income or secondary graduates continue to earn consistently ticket to a first job, but it will eventually help work- less, a common measure of poverty, is higher in more than those with a high school diploma or less. ers get promoted well above their less formally Canada than for any other industrialized country. They find jobs more easily and are more likely to educated peers. And according to Statistics Canada, one third of keep them during an economic downturn. They Moreover, in spite of popular suggestions to those aged 25 to 34 who studied the humanities in are also, it is worth noting, more likely to be active the contrary, not only is there scant sign of a skills university and a quarter of those who studied the citizens in both the social and political sense. shortage among the trades in Canada, but the social sciences hold jobs for which a high school Admittedly, average wages and salaries among majority of the occupations showing signs of future education would suffice. liberal arts graduates are typically much lower than shortages are in health care, mining and engineer- At best, then, liberal arts degrees seem to be those in fields such as engineering, and are losing ing, none of which are particularly apprenticeship- leaving graduates indebted and underemployed. ground, but they continue to meet or exceed those friendly. In a more cynical light, these degrees waste four of college attendees, especially among women, So what is really happening? How can we explain or more years at a most important time in any who make up well over half of Canada’s university the increasing negativity with which a liberal arts Canadian’s development as a citizen, taxpayer and population. degree seems to be viewed by university applicants member of the global community. There are also indications that the earning and public officials given the clear opportunities Commentators have typically offered three patterns of graduates in the liberal arts are more that such an education represents? solutions to these challenges. Peter Thiel, the co- consistent than those in other disciplines. As For one, technological change has permanently founder of PayPal, has paid students $100,000 not opposed to business graduates, for example, the altered the economic landscape more quickly than to attend college for two years. He points to Bill salaries of liberal arts graduates tend to increase some of us anticipated, but not nearly as quickly Gates and Mark Zuckerberg as examples of how at a predictable rate regardless of the state of the as others have supposed. As machines displace creativity often flows most easily outside of the uni- Canadian economy. Much of that stability has been lower skilled workers in a number of fields, new versity classroom. attributed to the preponderance of graduates work- higher skilled analytical jobs are emerging to fix Here in Canada, Cabinet minister Jason Kenney ing in the public sector, and some fear that such those machines, invent new ones and create new promotes greater emphasis on the trades: “We have jobs will gradually disappear, but it is important to applications for them. As a result, innovation and to do away with this idea … that young people who remember that even the current Harper adminis- problem-solving abilities now come at a premium. tration—hardly a friend of big government—has University graduates, and especially those in Adam Chapnick is the deputy director of education not decreased the size of the federal public service the liberal arts, should, in such a context, be at at the Canadian Forces College. since coming to power. a tremendous advantage. Their critical thinking,

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 3 reading and writing abilities should make them Today, however, for all but the best connected grants available to students. Admittedly, some indispensable. That is why some of them are doing and wealthiest students, a failure to develop the who do not need the credits still benefit more than so well, and many are in such high demand. One necessary critical thinking skills in university others who do, but today Canadian governments third of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies studied means graduating into a globalized world in which and universities distribute over $7 billion in non- the liberal arts, for example. (Minister Kenney him- there will always be countless others better pre- repayable form including tax benefits, grants and self, who makes more than $200,000 per year as a pared to take advantage of desirable employment scholarships to post-secondary students each year. member of the Cabinet, studied philosophy as an opportunities. (Colleges and universities collect about the same undergraduate.) Too many students, it seems, are not being given $7 billion in tuition fees from domestic students, At the same time, however, society’s acknow- this message, especially in the liberal arts, where making net tuition, for all intents and purposes, ledgement of the importance of post-secondary the more subjective nature of assessment—not close to $0.) Thanks to various public schemes education to national economic prosperity seems to mention a lack of transparency and clarity in student debt levels have also been stable for over to have encouraged the unhelp- a decade. ful idea that all qualified students That financial commitment is should continue their formal Until the 1960s, the average American important; however, provincial schooling immediately upon undergraduate student spent about governments need to avoid por- graduating high school and that trayals of post-secondary edu- post-secondary degrees or diplo- 40 hours per week on academics. Today, cation as an extension of high mas should become prerequisites school and speak of it instead as for employment of any sort. students spend just 27 hours overall. a demanding, albeit worthwhile, According to the Conference long-term personal investment. Board of Canada, in the first decade of the 21st cen- ­grading policies and approaches (not all universi- Post-secondary institutions should be funded tury, full-time enrollments in Canadian universities ties list class averages alongside student grades, for based on their support for specific, faculty- increased from a little more than 650,000 to over example)—makes it difficult for professors to fail endorsed learning outcomes rather than for the 1 million. And this influx of students appears to them outright. number of students who come through their real or have fuelled credential inflation. Put another way, too many students apply to virtual doors. In other words, while many 21st-century jobs university without first pledging to dedicate them- Moreover, since recent research indicates that require academic skills, too many employers now selves to real, transformative academic learning. the human brain is not fully mature until the early use degrees to reduce their applicant pool (or, as When they arrive, they are shocked by the amount twenties, and there is no evidence that 17-year-olds others might put it, as reliable signals of appli- of effort it takes to learn, but realize almost as achieve greater learning outcomes than do older cants’ potential), regardless of the demands of the quickly that they can invest significantly less of students, it makes little sense to rush individuals position. One U.S. survey noted, for example, that themselves—what is now called learning “strategic- who are not ready into demanding academic pro- only 37 percent of employers who made degrees a ally”—and still pass. grams. And yet we do. We make financial aid and requirement bothered to look at the transcripts of Once they receive their credential, however, RESP top-ups easily accessible to students right out their applicants. they find themselves utterly unprepared for the of high school, even if they are only going to uni- Credentialism has also affected the student jobs they had hoped to obtain. As for all of versity because they do not know what else to do. mentality. Rather than pursuing a university the material that they studied to survive a par- Such incentives could be limited until age 19 or 20, education, more and more enrol simply to get a ticular test or write a certain paper, it too is almost encouraging students who have not received merit- degree. We do not have equivalent numbers for immediately forgotten. based scholarships to engage in the world and Canada, and some have disputed elements of their All this leaves potential employers confused develop an appreciation of the opportunities that methodology, but Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa and frustrated. Too many of them believe, wrongly, higher education can provide before they register provide some compelling evidence in their con- that all liberal arts graduates have learned to think. for classes. troversial 2011 book, Academically Adrift: Limited Some, moreover, go even further and assume, Alternatively, governments could at least Learning on College Campuses. Until the 1960s, the wrongly again, that the critical thinking skills increase the incentives for recent high school average American undergraduate student spent developed in the classroom can compensate for, graduates to wait. Programs like Katimavik, which about 40 hours per week on academics, be that in rather than merely complement, real-world experi- used to provide young Canadians with practical, the classroom or at home alone studying. Today, ence acquired through on-the-job training. real-world leadership opportunities, could be students spend just 27 hours overall, and study So employers complain about the universities, revitalized and expanded. Governments could time, when the real learning often takes place, is and the universities criticize employers for failing partner with employers—focusing, at least at first, down from an average of 25 hours per week to less to understand what education, as opposed to job on Canadian university alumni—to develop more than 13. training, is supposed to achieve. accessible and relevant pre-university work experi- Meanwhile, education scholars have demon- Where do we go from here? ence programs. strated that skills in critical thinking and analysis Given the importance of an educated popula- As governments demand clearer learning out- must be practised deliberately to be learned. These tion to Canada’s prosperity, it will not suffice to tell comes, university administrators could work with skills require serious, sustained reflection, and they young people they need not bother with school their faculty to develop more concrete expectations cannot be maintained without continuous renewal. since they can learn a trade, or that they should of what learning means in particular programs and It is not surprising, therefore, that Arum and Roksa avoid majoring in liberal arts subjects in university. courses. In this context, the spirit of the Lumina would find that well over one third of the college We need a concerted effort from across society, Foundation’s efforts to establish transparent degree students they surveyed showed no statistically sig- including governments, university administrators, qualifications profiles in American institutions is nificant improvement in critical thinking over their faculty and employers, as well as from students and worth emulating. first two college years. their families. How these outcomes are measured—whether Those who multi-task in class, who cram for This effort begins from the premise that what through learning portfolios that document student exams, who write research essays in a single draft matters about a university education, particularly progress or end-of-study tests, or other means—are the night before and who generally privilege their in the liberal arts, is less your choice of major, developed by faculty to recognize the unique ele- paying jobs or their social lives over their schooling and more how you study and what you learn. ments of their courses, disciplines and programs, are not going to learn. Paradoxically, their lack of Furthermore, we need a general understanding and then institutionalized by university adminis- critical thinking skills will prevent many of them that it is in society’s best interest that every liberal trations. Ultimately, institutions are funded in large from realizing what they are missing. That they can arts graduate has in fact learned how to learn, part based on their ability to achieve the prescribed obtain a post-secondary credential by doing just even if that means that there are fewer graduates outcomes. enough to pass only reinforces the disconnect. altogether. Empty degrees are no longer harmless. Admittedly, the Higher Education Quality In the past, that disconnect was relatively harm- They devalue real learning, create false confidence Council of Ontario’s recent study of outcomes- less. University graduates were relatively rare, and among graduates and mislead employers. based funding is, at best, inconclusive, but there good jobs were plentiful. Indeed, some Canadians Let’s start with the possible role of governments. are indications that positive results will take time, continue to believe that learning how to think is Their role is already a large one. and that measurement indicators often require merely an associated benefit of a successful univer- While university tuition has increased dramat- revisions. sity experience, rather than the point of one. ically across Canada, so too have tax credits and Detractors of rationalized learning outcomes,

4 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada who warn that tying government funding to them learning outcomes of a program to design courses common assumption that any degree is better will incent universities, and even professors, to try that build the skills necessary to succeed, rather than no degree at all, and that university is a great to game the system are naive. Gaming is always than letting professors design their own pet courses place to experiment and explore without serious there: consider how hard universities and faculties in isolation from one another—is also critical. consequences.­ work today to recruit students because government These measures of accountability are not mere The world today has changed. Universities do funding is based so heavily on enrollment. The key bureaucratic exercises, nor, if implemented cor- provide many of these same opportunities, but a is to create incentives for the strategically minded rectly, should they compromise academic freedom. degree without learning is a degree without mean- gamers that best serve Canada’s long-term needs. Cognitive science tells us that students learn more ing. Applicants must be prepared to identify as Internships and placements should also be when they understand exactly what they are try- adults and treat their studies like a full-time job. reconceptualized. In the liberal arts context, they ing to achieve. Appreciating how their courses fit Spending 40 hours per week either in class or at are less helpful as on-the-job training than as peda- together keeps students engaged and allows them home working should be the norm. Of course, not gogical tools to increase student engagement. to reflect on, and monitor, their own progress. everyone can afford to enroll full time, but part- Even more importantly, universities must Meanwhile, private sector leaders should think timers should assume a commitment of eight hours draw lessons from the find- per week per course and set the ings of Gallup and others that Empty degrees are no longer harmless. They pace of their education accord- successful learning is largely ingly. Those who are neither contingent upon three things: devalue real learning, create false confidence ready for nor interested in such students need to feel that a commitment should delay their professors care about among graduates and mislead employers. their university education until them as people; they need they are. to be inspired by their courses to learn; and they seriously about the costs of using a university This is not to say that anyone should be forced require access to a mentor. Those kinds of supports credential for anything but evidence of specific to declare a major before they arrive on campus. underscore the relevance of the liberal arts class- capacities. If a liberal arts education is critical to Rather, it is to argue that liberal arts students need room experience that is too often ignored, if not a particular position, interviewers should demand to realize that, regardless of whether they ultimately misunderstood.­ not just transcripts, but also evidence of how the pass a course, learning does not take place while Most students who study Renaissance history courses on that transcript and the knowledge texting or tweeting, and just getting by is no longer do not find jobs in museums. But many do begin acquired from them have affected job candidates as enough to guarantee employment, let alone a ful- careers that emphasize data analysis and persua- people and as prospective employees. filling life as an active and engaged citizen. sive writing, and those skills are nurtured in the Finally, families need to refresh their under- The liberal arts themselves, and the skills that history classroom. It is therefore up to the profes- standing of the purpose of a liberal arts education. studying them offers, are more relevant than ever, soriate to revise their course titles and descrip- Traditionally, it has been all too common for high and those who recognize their value and apply tions—not to mention their assessment processes school graduates with reasonable grades but no themselves accordingly seem to be doing quite and criteria—to be more transparent about how clear direction to head straight to university to find well. Their success, however, comes in spite of a students might benefit from their classes outside of themselves. These students have gravitated to Canadian learning environment—cultivated by the academy. liberal arts programs that are perceived, rightly or employers, administrators, and even faculty—that Greater coherence across liberal arts majors and wrongly, as less demanding. Parents and guard- keeps in place systemic deterrents to deep learning. programs—working backward from the expected ians have encouraged such choices, based on the We can, and must, do better.

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May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 5 Horror Undimmed A feminist scholar investigates the place of the Montreal massacre in our collective memory. Joan Sangster

massacre in particular and violence in general. tion to Polytéchnique. By including The Globe and “I Hate Feminists!” Blais concedes that, over time, commemorations Mail, she hoped to compare memory construction December 6, 1989, and Its Aftermath of the massacre led to more widespread public between anglophone and francophone commun- Mélissa Blais consciousness of violence against women as a ities, although this is not done in any complexity Translated from French by Phyllis Aronoff and serious social problem. However, one might be or depth; her primary focus is on Quebec. Blais Howard Scott allowed a measure of cynicism about the uneven sees the murders as part of a broader social phe- Fernwood and episodic attention violence is given. In the nomenon, “the misogynist murder suicide,” but 140 pages, softcover wake of recent charges against a celebrity, some she also insists that all violence must be situated in ISBN 9781552666807 commentators announced proudly that the media its specific historical, social, political and cultural had opened up a useful public dialogue about context. Like a number of feminist legal theorists, violence, as if the issue was somehow a new rev- she concludes that violence against women thrives n the current moment, violence against elation. The lack of historical sensibility is striking: in and is shaped by conditions of gender inequality, women is positioned as both a raw memory of feminists have been raising similar concerns since and cannot be addressed apart from it. Ithe past as well as an evocative spectre of our the 1970s, when their alternative newspapers pub- Blais’s broader theoretical intent is to probe the present. The 25th anniversary of the Montreal mas- lished articles on violence as a systemic ­problem, power of collective memory: how the social context sacre has now passed. Aboriginal families continue why women were afraid to report rape and why shapes social memory, the interpretive struggle to press for a federal inquiry into over the definition of memory, the disappeared women from and how memory is used as a their communities. Speeches University deans, professors, psychological form of mobilization as well as in Quebec recently commem- remembrance. She explores the orating the horrific violence of experts, the police, even many students press as “transmitters” or “vec- December 6, 1989, made direct tors” of “sites of memory,” which links to women’s ongoing experi- also condemned feminist politics as too are always ongoing projects, ence of sexual assault, domestic extreme, divisively damaging. changing over time and poten- violence and the epidemic of tially contested terrain. Drawing violence visited upon aboriginal on cultural theorist Stuart Hall’s women. Thirty-three of the 36 female members they stayed in violent households. If hashtags early “Marxist” writing on ideology, hegemony and in the National Assembly spoke across party lines existed then, they might have been #WhyIStayed the media, she argues that a radical, feminist per- in a tribute to the women murdered, echoing a or #BeenRapedNeverReported. The democratic spective struggled to secure any media legitimacy, call to end the violence women face across the potential of social media, we are told, will encour- this legitimacy being conferred instead on existing globe. Solidarity was expressed in the use of the age more open discussion, but seasoned feminists explanations that did not fundamentally challenge collective “nous”: “nous sommes Rinelle Harper, might be excused for feeling as if we have been sit- the status quo. While the massacre was interpreted 16 ans, violée et laissée pour morte … nous sommes ting in a soundproof chamber for years, our voices differently according to the outlook and experience ces 1500 Québécoises tuées depuis 1989 par d’ex- on mute, watching as violence persists and women of various actors involved, we did not have mul- conjoints … nous sommes ces 200 étudiantes enle- are cowed by understandable fear, trepidation or tiple memories in the press. Some interpretations vées dans une école du Nigéria…” the inability to speak up, leave, escape. trumped others, precisely because they fit more After 25 years of academic and popular debate That is precisely Blais’s frustration. Although comfortably with “common sense” understandings about the meaning of the Montreal massacre, and I think the book may in places lack nuance, her of social reality. cultural creations speaking to it, are there any analysis of newspaper stories from La Presse, Le The book has several strengths: the author’s new lines of investigation that might enlighten our Devoir and The Globe and Mail, backed up with attempts to map the changing historical, political understanding of these murders and their relation- other sources such as student newspapers, maga- and social contexts framing collective memory; ship to the history of gender violence? Melissa zines and the feature film Polytéchnique, lends her recognition that more than one discourse Blais’s intervention, “I Hate Feminists”: December 6, weight to her critical take on the changing and competed for commemorative attention; her 1989, and Its Aftermath, goes over some existing unchanging discourses shaping the memory of understanding that feminist perspectives, whether ground. But it also makes an argument that needs the massacre. This book began as a master’s thesis articulated by women or pro-feminist men, were to be heard: she asks why mainstream media at the Université de Québec à Montréal, was first heterogeneous; and her complex juxtaposition of accounts, first of the event and subsequently of its published in 2009, and has only now been trans- both anti-feminist and feminist discourses within commemoration, were reluctant to embrace femin- lated into English. Given this trajectory, the writing, one book. She also keeps her sights firmly focused ist interpretations of the massacre. Why, she asks, while accessible and clear, is more mechanical than on the human tragedy of this violence as an expres- did many other explanations, such as Marc Lépine journalistically graceful; however, it was not origin- sion of both anti-women and anti-feminist anger, as the “sick madman,” or solutions, such as gun ally written as a popular book. Moreover, to Blais’s although this kind of analysis does not mean, as control, dominate, while feminists’ mobilizations credit, academic theory does not overwhelm and some simplistic journalism claimed, that femin- against and theorizations about violence were not mystify; rather, she invests heavily in her empirical ists were reducing all men to perpetrators and all only less visible, but also denigrated? evidence, using it to test out theories about public women to victims. This argument may seem at first glance to memory, and to show why some interpretations of For Blais, the historical context of the 1980s ignore significant media attention paid to the violence come to dominate over others. framed the original event: despite successful femin- Blais’s method is to probe four chronological ist mobilizations for reproductive and other rights, Joan Sangster is director of the Frost Centre for snapshots of the media responses to the massacre, stereotypical views of women and gender inequal- Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies at Trent first immediately after its occurrence, then at the ity persisted, and a nasty anti-feminist backlash University. 10th and 20th anniversaries, and, finally, the recep- was brewing across North America. She identifies

6 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada key discourses that shaped the collective memory tions, of hijacking a tragedy to promote their point after the massacre. Feminist scholars have also immediately after the massacre. Some commen- of view, of creating acrimony between men and written about the perplexingly contradictory nature tators, especially in Montreal, initially advocated women, of seeing the event only through their own of commemorations as a tool of political mobiliza- the need “to forget,” or to remain silent as the only “ideological lens.” Feminists’ difficulty in having tion against violence, and they have questioned dif- respectful tribute to the victims and their loved their views heard rather than caricatured is all too ferent generational responses to feminism—after ones. The problem with “forgetting” and silence familiar to those of who teach women’s and gender all, we now have students in our classes who have is that any discussion of violence, patriarchal atti- studies. Those with other political perspectives never heard of the Montreal massacre. How do we tudes and gender power is then rendered a rude have ideas, however feminists are guilty of promot- explain their “post-feminist” rejection of feminist intrusion on human suffering. Other media com- ing ideology. Feminists, Blais suggests, were also discussions of systemic violence, asks American mentary explored our increasingly violent society increasingly constructed by the media within two cultural commentator Wendy Chun. Is it an under- as a whole, the mass murder as a phenomenon, the paradigms: the reasonable/good and the radical/ standable—if self-defeating—survival strategy? The failure to deal with mental health issues, and, over bad. The former group understood the suffering impact of the Montreal massacre on engineering time, the issue of gun control came to the fore. One of men as well as women, the need for common as a profession, as Canadian historian Ruby Heap question was revisited repeatedly: both expert and cause and gradual reform, while the latter were too has shown, has also been complex, as anti-women armchair commentators weighed in on the psych- focused on radical analysis of patriarchy and male practices are more often criticized, but feminism is ology of Lépine as a “mad” killer, someone who dominance as the problem. still viewed with trepidation. was an anomaly, outside of society, Blais’s pessimism, if sometimes detached from it: he was the abused overstated, is not without cause. boy with “an absent father,” some- Seasoned feminists might be excused While it is true parliamentarians one who even “suffered” under the no longer dare laugh at discussions weight of his anger and alienation. for feeling as if we have been sitting of domestic violence as they did in Tracing media commentary the early 1980s, what does it really through two anniversary com- in a soundproof chamber for years, mean when they don white feath- memorations, Blais shows how the ers? Individualizing discourses that distance of time crystallized some watching as women are cowed by locate the causes of misogynistic themes, augmented or minimized understandable fear, trepidation or the violence in “bad people, bad deci- others: ten years after the mas- sions or inadequate families” are sacre, she finds some of the original inability to speak up, leave, escape. still routinely invoked, stymieing an discourses more closely intercon- understanding of systemic violence. nected, with one commemoration, We can dismiss the inanity of right- for example, linking violence against women dir- While Blais does highlight some of the feminist wing American news commentators who want ectly to the issue of firearms. Yet a constant, she debates about commemoration and violence, the to blame racial inequality on absent, bad black suggests, was the less visible coverage of feminist book’s brevity and limited research focus inevit- fathers. But our own prime minister’s claim that protests, conferences and actions, and the resist- ably under-emphasize how extensive these have the missing and disappeared aboriginal women ance feminists encountered when they argued the been. It is an irony that feminists are portrayed are not a “sociological phenomenon” is just as massacre could only be understood in the wider as a monolithic ideological bloc, when that is far mind-blowingly “ignorant,” to use the words of context of gender inequality and systemic violence from the truth. Blais opens the book with a broad the Assembly of First Nations—a characterization against women. The collective memory most evi- and pluralistic definition of feminism, but her own many feminists would endorse. The solution, con- dent in the media did not underline the massacre analysis tends to emphasize patriarchy as the defin- trary to the logic of conservatives, is not simply a as both a misogynistic and anti-feminist event, nor ing element of women’s oppression. Other feminist stronger dose of law and order. did the majority of commentators welcome a fem- writing contends that, while gender is critical to an Blais’s discussion of the problems of the past inist analysis that understood violence to exist on a analysis of oppression, other interconnected fac- is therefore quite prescient: the tendency to indi- continuum from the everyday to the extreme, and tors, including women’s class, ethnicity, race and vidualize violence rather than confront its social be endemic to a patriarchal society. sexuality, play a critical role in how they experience roots, the media marginalization of strong feminist There was some consensus among feminists violence, whether they can escape it, how it is por- analyses in favour of more moderate commentary, about the nature of the massacre, such as the trayed. In the aftermath of the massacre, there were and the difficulty we have in comprehending why symbolic significance of the site of the murders: soul-searching debates among women’s groups misogynistic violence persists, despite other equal- an educational setting, occupationally typed as over the placement of a monument to the Montreal ity gains for women. Blais may be right: 25 years “masculine,” where women had only recently massacre in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, so later, we should be thankful that feminist dialogue secured new acceptance. Yet feminists disagreed, close to the disappearance of poor and aboriginal has enhanced public consciousness of violence she shows, on how Lépine’s psychology should women. Some feminist organizations refused to against women, but we still have far to go if we want be analyzed, how the event expressed violence join the federal panel on violence against women meaningful change. against women and what solutions were possible. Whatever the solution proposed, feminists and their allies did see sustaining the memory of the massacre as critical, a potential force for mobiliza- tion, for recognition, for social change, so that the injustices of the past and present might not be repeated in the future. Although I began the book skeptical about her arguments about the persisting virulence of anti-­feminist responses to the massacre, Blais has shown these did not come only from a few indi- viduals we might dismiss as marginal “outlier” elements (which is not to minimize the horror and danger of such groups): army men who reportedly hosted a dinner in Lépine’s honour, the misogyn- ist websites that still celebrate him, or masculinist groups that laid the blame for men’s alienation and anger at the door of feminism. University deans, professors, psychological experts, the police, even many students also condemned feminist politics as too extreme, divisively damaging, even claiming they were similar to Lépine’s extremism. Feminists were accused, even by Quebec student publica-

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 7 Short Skirts and Water Cures An intimate look at the unconventional life of a 19th-century trailblazer. Linda Kay

Few rural women at the bottom of the economic cure” stemmed from a knee injury Joel sustained Seeking Our Eden: The Dreams and ladder could read and write well, but even as a as a youngster. As Findon describes it, Joel’s axe Migrations of Sarah Jameson Craig teenager, Sarah Jameson read avidly, wrote poetry, slipped while he was cutting down trees and Joanne Findon documented her life obsessively and harboured opened a gash on his knee. One of the men working McGill-Queen’s University Press literary aspirations. She dreamed big, rejected con- with him plugged the injury with a quid of tobacco 228 pages, hardcover ventional medical remedies and refused to bend to from his mouth and tied the leg with a dirty hand- ISBN 9780773544802 society’s notion of proper attire for women, deem- kerchief. The wound became infected, leaving Joel ing restrictive corsets and floor-length skirts harm- crippled for life. ful and drawing strong disapproval by wearing, at The water cure shunned remedies laced with n the late 1960s, my friends and I decided age 17, the contested “reform” style that consisted alcohol, then in use by medical authorities, in to wear pants to our public high school. We of pants covered by a short dress. favour of hydropathy, defined as “a comprehensive Iwere promptly sent home and approach to disease manage- ordered not to return unless we ment that left no aspect of life were wearing a skirt or a dress. Women of courage have been thoroughly unregulated.” The hydropathic My friends and I believed method seems oddly prescient in we were gutsy girls in the van- erased from Canadian history. some ways; it banned tobacco and guard, and a year later, the school embraced a vegetarian diet, pure reversed its policy. Growing up on the cusp of a Her clothes marked her as eccentric and con- drinking water, vigorous outdoor exercise and a women’s movement that opened many doors, I had troversial, Findon writes, but Sarah even created a hygienic system of combating illness by administer- no idea that women had been far more daring long wedding outfit in the reform style, with the support ing a series of baths. before I was born. of her future husband, cousin Joel Bonney Craig, Findon tells us that Sarah and Joel’s dream The impulse to discover (and recover) our and she continued to wear the reform style every of establishing a utopian community had them feminist foremothers has been driven by the real- day, thus distancing herself even further from her corresponding with would-be members from all ization—surprise, surprise—that women my age neighbours. “I had counted the cost, and knew it around the United States and Canada and even were not the trailblazers we supposed. We were not would make me unpopular, an object of ridicule attempting to publish a small journal devoted to the leaders of the pack when it came to pursuing among our neighbors; and despised and scorned the movement. But their dream would eventually an unusual path, undertaking an unconventional by others,” she wrote. Despite opposition, she held collapse, Findon writes, under the weight of the ter- career or daring to be different in the name of fast, deeming “that the way women dressed was rible poverty and personal misfortune. The couple equality and women’s rights. unhealthful, uncomfortable, as well as inconven- had 14 children (four died as infants or toddlers) Women of courage have been so thoroughly ient; their fettering, hampering, monstrous skirts and Joel was never able to find steady work because erased from Canadian history that a movement gathering and holding damp and filth, and their of his injury. He died when Sarah was in her forties has arisen in the past few decades to recognize the tightly compressed waists, excluding the air from and their youngest child was just two years old. women who set the table for those who followed. the lungs, being positively and constantly disease Nevertheless, for Sarah, the utopian dream never Books on Canadian journalists and writers, such as producing.” faded. Findon takes us on her epic journey after Barbara Freeman’s Kit’s Kingdom: The Journalism An independent spirit even at age 14, Sarah Joel’s death, moving her family to the United States of Kathleen Blake Coleman and Beyond Bylines: briefly and spontaneously ran away from home, in search of the colony she had envisioned all her Media Workers and Women’s Rights in Canada, likely to seek fame and fortune as a writer. No doubt adult life and, later, west to Saskatchewan, and Janice Fiamengo’s The Woman’s Page: Journalism burdened by the daily domestic labour as the eld- finally to British Columbia, where Findon believes and Rhetoric in Early Canada, Margery Lang’s est girl among nine children, and keenly aware of that Sarah finally found her Eden. Women Who Made the News: Female Journalists the limited possibilities for a girl in her economic Sarah never did become the writer she hoped in Canada, 1880–1945, and Pádraig Ó Siadhail’s circumstances, Sarah set out on foot from her cabin to be when she left home on a whim, as a young Katherine Hughes: A Life and a Journey have in the New Brunswick bush to ostensibly attend a girl seeking fame. She continued to submit work revived the life and work of women who made a church prayer meeting, but somewhere along the for publication, but it was not until the last decade mark more than a century ago, but were largely line simply kept walking, intent on reaching St. of her life that a poem published in the Christian forgotten or ignored in the chronicles written by Andrews. From there, Findon writes, she was likely Herald marked the first time she was paid for her men of that era. planning to sail to Boston or New York, where her writing. Nevertheless, she left a detailed personal Joanne Findon now introduces us to another father and older brother often took temporary work account of her struggles that Findon rightly believes extraordinary Canadian woman in Seeking Our in the shipyards and had friends and contacts. After “gives voice to the normally unvoiced experience of Eden: The Dreams and Migrations of Sarah Jameson travelling quite a distance, she entered a cavern- other marginal women like her.” Craig. A professor of English literature at Trent ous forest and did an abrupt about-face, suddenly Findon delivers a sweet surprise at the book’s University, Findon uses unpublished diaries and “overwhelmed by a sense of the utter folly and mad- conclusion, when she reveals a personal connection a memoir written in the final years of her subject’s ness of my attempt.” to her subject: she is Sarah’s great-­granddaughter. life to paint a poignant portrait of a woman born Sarah tried to escape her conservative rural Findon’s own search of discovery (and recovery) 175 years ago in rural New Brunswick who took community in other ways as well. Findon explains takes her to southwestern New Brunswick attempt- risks to realize her convictions. in detail a utopian communal movement that ing to find a tangible trace of “that rebellious girl stirred Sarah and Joel’s imagination, as the couple who had launched herself from home on that Linda Kay is a journalism professor at Concordia dreamed of creating a colony of like-minded indi- winter day long ago.” Findon’s trip to seek any sign University. She is the author of The Sweet Sixteen: viduals who shared their belief in reform-style dress of Sarah’s existence stamps more vividly into our The Journey That Inspired the Canadian Women’s and their intense interest in the healing properties memory a courageous woman who truly chal- Press Club (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012). of water. Their attraction to the so-called “water lenged her time and circumstance.

8 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Irreversible How planting cacao trees in Indonesia changed life forever. Larry Krotz

dramatically. In 1990, Li tells us, “Lauje highland- Native peoples. But the government provided Land’s End: ers didn’t have a word in their language equivalent little real guidance and, in actuality, did not do Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier to the English term ‘land.’ They had words for much more than build a road. The few foreign Tania Murray Li forests in different stages of regrowth, and a word development schemers who happened by just Duke University Press for earth (petu L), most often used in the couplet messed things up. A Canadian non-governmental 225 pages, softcover that referred to the spirit owners of the earth and organization showed up in the early 1990s want- ISBN 9780822357056 water.” But with cacao, land previously communally ing to promote the planting of cacao. Li remains held, and something the Lauje charmingly believed coy, never naming the NGO and remaining vague was borrowed from their ancestors, increasingly about her own role with it, but everything it had in n Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an became private property. mind was—in her view—wrongheaded, including Indigenous Frontier, a western anthropologist Customary notions of sharing changed and con- providing seedlings to exactly the wrong people. So Itravels to far-off Indonesia, locates a com- flicts ensued. Those who were successful planted it was a blessing that the project never got off the munity of indigenous people who live more or less more trees and claimed more land, often by “buying ground and the do-gooders departed. isolated in the hills, and watches them struggle with out” their less successful neighbours and relatives Her book’s purpose, she writes, was to “renew the changes wrought by what one might broadly (although freehold tenure was never formalized). ethnographic engagement with the rural places label the advancing “modern world.” The anthro- Cash gained a novel pre-eminence as highlanders that continue to be home to half the world’s popu- pologist is Tania Murray Li, a Cambridge-educated decided they wanted things such as television sets, lation.” Its broad implications, Li argues, are for all Canada Research Chair in the Political Economy school fees for ambitious children and better cloth- the world’s agricultural peasants. She has a political and Culture of Asia at the University of Toronto. ing so they would not feel “ragged” when they went agenda that she puts forward: “by challenging poli- Her subjects are the Lauje people who, as a whole, to town. Cash also became the currency for buying cies that promote the intensification of capitalist number no more than 60,000 on the Indonesian labour. Most dramatic, though, was the transforma- relations as a recipe for poverty reduction.” What island of Sulawesi. The cohort Li visits repeatedly tion of land from something simply to plant on into give the story value as a cautionary tale and make over 20 years between 1990 and 2010, is a handful a commodity of exchange or collateral for a loan. the Canadian non-specialist take notice are the of families, traditional highland people whose cus- “So long as highlanders held their land in com- possible parallels with the situation of indigenous tomary existence was growing food crops—maize mon,” writes Li, “they couldn’t pledge or sell it, and peoples in Canada, particularly given the ongoing and rice—supplemented by small bits of cash from a creditor could not seize it as repayment for a debt. debate over private as opposed to shared or com- tobacco or shallots that they transported on foot to Individual landownership changed this situation. munal property on First Nations reserves. The rosy coastal market towns. Although mortgages and loans—like landowner- scenarios do not necessarily always pan out. To the outsider, this looks idyllic. Families culti- ship—were not documented, highlanders who held Land’s End is essentially a tale of encroach- vated land considered communal, regularly clearing land as individual property could be pressured to ing modernity or, more specifically, responses to new patches of forest to replace depleted plots. There sell it to cover their debts.” the encroachment of modernity by people who was a shared sense of ownership of the fruits of one’s The Garden of Eden had ended, and things have hitherto been sheltered by their remoteness. labour, respecting both genders and even the work quickly descended from optimism into disappoint- Seemingly unlimited land shared in common gets of children. The economy operated through trading ment. The highlanders seemed prepared to work reconfigured with (in this case creeping) private or barter or simply giving away foodstuffs alongside hard and be frugal, but watched their traditional ownership, which changes all, including people’s a culture of shared labour organized around work customs and social niceties break down, one by one. relationships to one another. It is tempting to revert bees that doubled as celebratory community feasts. There was no safety net; the standard modernization to Marx for the analysis of this new and different “Highlanders’ autonomy was grounded in their sys- theories, Li purports, recognize that some people system for sorting out winners and losers, and that tem of shared access to common land and an open lose out when agriculture intensifies and becomes is where the author goes (even throwing in a bit land frontier,” writes Li. “All highlanders who wanted more competitive, but they go on to assume that ex- of Lenin). She has, after all, been observing the to farm had free access to land, and they could sur- farmers will become workers, selling their labour. In commodification of land, the introduction of cash vive on the food they grew.” Central Sulawesi, jobs remained scarce. economies, debt, wage labour, the pre-eminence of Over the course of two decades, she watches this If a good novel is a work of anthropology, does market forces and dependence on capital. To this change, precipitated by one main thing, the adop- it follow that a good anthropological report has the reviewer, the analysis seems a bit obligational; the tion of cacao as a cash crop. Cacao is not an annual elements of a novel? Li attempts character-based point has been adequately made in the narrative. crop such as corn or rice, but a tree-based product storytelling, even including an appendix of three Li is primarily observer and recorder—aided by a involving planting trees, waiting for them to mature, dozen dramatis personae. She attributes emotions faithful local interpreter of both language and local then harvesting from them. To make it work, itiner- to her subjects, as in: “Tabang was living in a better nuance named Rina, who, sadly, dies just near the ant farmers learned to stay put, investing in and house, but he was borrowing it from a brother who end of the project. The strength of the book is its guarding their trees. As a consequence, perceptions lived elsewhere. He was embarrassed because the recording of those observations that, in some ways, about what they might have called their land shifted house was still an empty shell with clothing hang- beg comparison with James Agee’s 1939 study of ing from the rafters and no furniture.” American sharecroppers in the classic Let Us Now Larry Krotz is a writer living in Toronto. His In her tale, no outside players or would-be Praise Famous Men. Although it is not quite as start- latest books are Piecing the Puzzle: The Genesis players take on substantial roles. The Indonesian lingly powerful as a piece of writing, Land’s End is of AIDS Research in Africa (2012) and The government’s needs to civilize and tame the high- well enough written that the tale of struggle, even Uncertain Business of Doing Good: Outsiders in landers and gather them conveniently around to a reviewer who admits to not much knowledge Africa (2008), both published by the University of centralized administrative centres hearken back about Indonesia or its indigenous peoples, is intrin- Manitoba Press. disturbingly to a century of Canadian efforts with sically interesting.

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 9 Paper Pusher Has the death of newsprint been overstated? Christopher Waddell

Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers Marc Edge New Star Books 303 pages, softcover ISBN 9781554201020

t takes a brave soul to write a book today about the state of newspapers in North IAmerica. The pace of change in both media industries and technology is such that no matter what the content, the book is bound to be at least partly out of date by the time it is published. Marc Edge has been able to mitigate that some- restructuring. It seemed like a brilliant strategy for of News consensus that the end for newspapers was what in Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death a while. Then along came the economic meltdown nigh. Digital would quickly triumph. of Newspapers by looking backward at the news- of 2008. Edge has contempt for the Future of News gang, paper business rather than forward. He describes Newspapers in the United States were already stressing the point that throughout this turmoil what has happened to newspapers primarily in the facing steady and sometimes steep circulation almost all newspapers continued to make money United States (with a couple of nods to Canada) declines as the popularity of the internet grew. An on an operating basis (leaving aside those interest focusing mostly on the past decade and a half. equally sharp double-digit annual drop in adver- payments). That is the reason he concludes that His argument that newspapers are far from dead tising revenue began after 2008. The situation in newspapers, in fact, have a lot of life left in them. is counterintuitive. It flies in the face of non-stop Canada was somewhat less dramatic. Circulation That is a message that is bound to warm the hearts predictions over the past half a dozen years that fell more slowly as did advertising revenue, as of those who still work at newspapers after all the their time is up. The doomsayers are led by those he Canada experienced less post-2008 economic downsizing, employees buyouts and layoffs. Edge describes as the Future of News consensus—digital turmoil than the United States did. There, key writes: evangelists such as Clay Shirky, Jeff Jarvis and Jay newspaper advertisers—automobiles, real estate, Rosen—all based in journalism schools in New retailing and financial services—were all on the Enough core advertising remained to sustain York City. They argue that digital is steamrollering ropes. They stopped spending on ads. That spend- monopoly newspapers, as most local mer- print and the organizations that publish news- ing recovered with time, but advertiser spending chants found that print on paper was still the papers, replacing them with new media and online shifted away from print. most effective way to reach their customers. information networks. That has gone for good and it is an enormous Newspapers also turned to their readers for But Edge is correct in his description of what has problem for North American newspapers. They increased revenues, both from print sales and happened. Greatly Exaggerated is a well-researched have traditionally relied on advertising for about for online access. Affluent readers who tended and well-explained story of how the newspaper 80 percent of their revenue. The speed of the col- to pay closer attention to their communities business changed in the second half of the 20th lapse in print advertising is extraordinary. For were the ones that advertisers sought most, and into the 21st century. Publicly traded corpora- example, the Newspaper Association of America and they were also more likely to pay a little tions in the United States (and Canwest Global in reports print advertising revenue fell to $17.3 bil- bit extra for their daily newspaper. It turned Canada) led by financial engineers replaced family lion in 2013 from $47.7 billion in 2005. Newspapers out that the business model for newspapers and private owners of newspapers and newspaper had thought print advertising would simply shift wasn’t broken at all, and was instead quite chains. They were interested not primarily in jour- online and their website would be the beneficiaries. robust. nalism but in how much money could be extracted They were wrong. The Pew Research Center has from an industry that was traditionally extraordin- estimated that for every $1 in revenue newspapers Well … maybe. But that robustness is a product arily profitable. They did it all by borrowing other receive for digital advertising, they lose $16 in print of those steep cuts in reporting and editing staff people’s money to engage in consolidation and advertising. and reductions in the breadth of their coverage. Newspaper chains responded with cutbacks and The impact of these changes gets very short shrift Christopher Waddell is a professor at the School closures, while still pretending they were covering as in the book, yet both the quality and content of Journalism and Communication at Carleton much as before. Slashing costs through widespread of the newspaper are damaged when there are University in Ottawa and also holds the university’s layoffs of journalists eased some of the problem but fewer reporters covering less. Readers notice. That Carty Chair in Business and Financial Journalism. those interest payments on the money borrowed shows up in continuing declines in circulation and He is a former parliamentary bureau chief and by the engineers were too large for some papers advertising, forcing more cuts to try to maintain a executive producer of news specials for CBC News to absorb. That led to a series of closures reducing much narrower operating profit than in the past. and a former national editor, Ottawa bureau chief some communities to one-paper monopolies. It was It is actually more of a vicious circle than a robust and reporter for The Globe and Mail. also the impetus for the predictions from the Future business model.

10 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Edge’s conclusion relies on the assumption that Added to that, newspapers (and television news organizations can provide them with news in what happened in the past is a good predictor of newscasts for that matter) can no longer predict formats that will attract and keep their attention. what will happen in the future. what their readers know about the stories in the It is a challenge as producing news for mobile “One reason newspapers continue to survive,” paper when they pick it up on their doorsteps in devices needs more, not fewer, people per story he states, “is because they continue to have a the morning. Some know a lot from following news yet there is no guarantee a tablet or smartphone local readership that is highly prized by advertis- online. Some know nothing and the content of the app will generate enough advertising revenue to ers because it is educated, affluent and engaged. morning paper is literally news to them. That makes cover its production costs. The Star may charge for Print also continues to enjoy significant ergonomic it very difficult for a newspaper’s editors to figure its tablet edition at some future point but it is not advantages over currently available electronic out what stories to cover and what angle to take on starting out there. alternatives.” them to appeal to the broadest cross-section of its It is one example, though, of how newspapers There are four reasons to question that readership at a time when they need more money are in fact evolving away from being papers. Some conclusion.­ from readers to replace lost advertising. If people will not survive. Others will make the transition to First, it is true that radio and then television were are not interested in the content of a newspaper being news organizations delivering information in each going to kill newspapers. The threat of the or think they have already seen it somewhere, they different ways to different audiences. In doing that internet, though, is different. Unlike the previous will not buy it. they will rely on their print reputation as trusted new technologies, the internet has sources for accuracy in the chaos adopted the format of newspapers, There is also no prospect for significant of the internet, where fiction telling stories primarily in text. But too often becomes facts through it is much more than that. News growth in print readership. Young repetition. Some readers will con- organizations and journalists can tinue to receive their news in print now tell stories online by com- people get lots of news but not from for a while but annually there will bining text, video, audio, photos, be fewer and fewer of them. At slides, graphics and data, using the newspapers. They do not read them. some point it will be just too costly most appropriate format for each to deliver a paper to too small an part of the story. Doing so animates and brings There is also no prospect for significant growth audience and the print editions will die. storytelling to life in a way text on a printed page in print readership. Young people get lots of news Greatly Exaggerated offers a good history of simply cannot match. but not from newspapers. They do not read them. how the newspaper industry has come to this Second, the advertising upheaval shows no The old argument that they would come to rely on crossroads. Edge is correct that newspapers have sign of slowing down. In recent quarters, both the newspapers as they got older, as happened with survived and, despite the predictions of their Toronto Star (Canada’s largest newspaper by circu- previous generations, is not going to happen this imminent demise, have made a profit on their oper- lation) and Postmedia (which owns the daily news- time. Newspapers historically benefitted from a ations. So runs the story up to this point, although papers in many of Canada’s major cities) have seen limited range of alternative news sources. The inter- that hardly guarantees them a long future. drops of 20 percent or more in their advertising rev- net means that is no longer the case. Complacently extending Edge’s story into the enue from the same quarter a year ago. Advertisers It is one example of how those under 30 are near future is a recipe for disillusionment. In fact, no longer need to use the media when they can undermining media assumptions. They do not what is greatly exaggerated is just the short time reach audiences directly online. Look at the web- have cable or satellite television either. They cannot frame for the death of newspapers, not the end sites operated by car makers. There, new and used afford both TV and internet service, yet they get all result. car buyers can comparison shop, build and price the video they want online. It is hard to imagine that their vehicle at home, then head down to the show- as they get older they will conclude it is essential room and buy it. It means much less need for trad- to start paying $80 or so a month for cable service. itional advertising. And that is happening across a Likewise there is no reason to think they will turn wide range of consumer goods. to print. Advertisers also gain some specific advantages The fourth and perhaps most important reason Give online compared to print. It is much cheaper and is the massive growth in the use of mobile devices easier to target audiences, delivering a message to across almost all age groups. Smartphones and those most likely to be interested based on their tablets undermine newspapers but could also be geographic location and past browsing habits. the salvation for the news media. Ride a bus, stand monthly. Using IP addresses allows micro-targeting those in an ATM lineup, sit at a coffee shop and what are living in a specific neighbourhood, eliminating the many people doing? Getting news and information Support the LRC with a advantage that newspapers used to have in deliv- on their smartphones. Mobile devices are simply a ering local audiences to local advertisers. Feedback different way to deliver information to audiences, monthly donation and help from clicks also lets advertisers instantly quantify but they require stories and information be told and us sustain all our publishing the response they are getting. In some cases adver- presented in a different way than is done either on tisers pay only based on the number of clicks on a computer screen or in print. Tablets require a dif- and programming activities. their ads. Newspaper websites are getting some of ferent storytelling format and approach even from the online ad revenue, but they find themselves smartphones. Provide ongoing, reliable, competing for advertising dollars with the likes of Postmedia has recognized that. Starting with the regular sources of funding Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites. In Ottawa Citizen, it is slowly redesigning all its news- addition to getting much less money for online ads papers to deliver information in separate ways for for the LRC with automatic than for their print predecessors, the ads on news print, computer screens, smartphones and tablets. withdrawals. It’s an easy organizations’ websites are now frequently sold by Another example is the Toronto Star, which is Google or other online marketers. They are taking making a major commitment to tablet journalism. and convenient way to give. some of the cash that used to come to the paper It will abandon its online paywall in September And you can change your through their advertising sales departments. when it introduces a new tablet publication based mind at any time. The third problem is the disappearing audience. on the success La Presse has enjoyed with its tablet Circulation is falling because newspapers do not edition. The Star is redesigning its newsroom pro- know what their readers want. For example, news- duction processes and how its reporters tell stories, Every gift—at every level— papers now think their readers want lots of local specifically for the tablet. The hope is advertisers makes a significant impact. news, but that revelation has come only after years will find the tablet edition more attractive than of cutting local content to save money. newspapers for precisely the range of presentation Reader interests did not matter much when options that only online provides. Visit reviewcanada.ca/ advertisers were covering almost all the costs of the Mobile also creates the opportunity to capture paper, but it makes a big difference when readers that younger generation who will not read papers. donate. are asked to pay more either per paper or through They are already engaged online and that is where paywalls for online newspaper sites. they find news. The question is whether the existing

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 11 congratulations! The Donner canadian Foundation is pleased to announce the outstanding book chosen for the seventeenth annual Donner Prize, the award for the best public policy book by a canadian.

$50,000 WINNER

Michael J. trebilcock for Dealing With Losers: The Political Economy of Policy Transitions (Oxford University Press)

Congratulations to the other fine nominees. These shortlisted titles received $7,500 each:

Marcel Boyer and Derek h. Burney and Joseph heath for nathalie elgrably-lévy for Fen osler hampson for Enlightenment 2.0: Réinventer le Québec: Brave New Canada: Restoring Sanity to Our Politics, Douze chantiers à entreprendre Meeting the Challenge of Our Economy, and Our Lives (Éditions Stanké) a Changing World (HarperCollins) (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

www.donnerbookprize.com

Books that Will change Your MinD aBout canaDa

12 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Born to Leave For generations, migration has been a Chinese way of life. David Layton

dants and bracelets, or listen to Meet Me in Venice: A Chinese the townspeople discuss the latest Immigrant’s Journey from the unemployment figures in Spain “as Far East to the Faraway West if the news was just another tidbit of Suzanne Ma small-town gossip.” Rowman and Littlefield Remittances from abroad 192 pages, hardcover have transformed the landscape. ISBN 9781442239364 Emigrants have sent money home to help pave new roads and moun- Cultivating Connections: tain paths, to renovate temples The Making of Chinese Prairie and set up new businesses such Canada as hotels and coffee shops. In Alison R. Marshall acts much more eccentric, they University of British Columbia have erected statues of Napoleon Press Bonaparte on his horse, Johann 288 pages, softcover Strauss wielding a gold violin ISBN 9780774828017 and a not-so-accurate replica of Michelangelo’s David, whose gen- itals, on orders from government nless you’re Native American, you ical advance has been checked by the extraordinary censors, have been covered with a copper leaf. “ came from someplace else.” So said rise of leftist Syriza, a party founded only in 2004, Sensing there is a fascinating and little-known UU.S. president Barack Obama in a which recently won the Greek elections. story embedded in this remote Chinese county, Ma speech on immigration urging his fellow Americans All of this is to say that it is probably not a pro- focuses her narrative on Ye Pei, a 16-year-old girl to consider that, when it comes to new immigrants pitious time to immigrate to Europe in general who is still in high school when they first meet. “Her seeking a better life, “most of us used to be them.” and Mediterranean Europe in particular. Yet in face radiated innocence, she dressed like a hipster This point should be obvious to Canadians Suzanne Ma’s absorbing book, Meet Me in Venice: in a white T-shirt and black vest,” Ma observes. who, like Americans, belong to a country that was A Chinese Immigrant’s Journey from the Far East to “And like all teenage girls around the world, she founded and forged by waves of immigrants arriv- the Faraway West, that is exactly what the citizens spoke fast. Like, very fast.” ing on its shores. If we need a reminder it is because, of one small county in China have been doing ever Slowly Pei’s story, all too typical for someone like mass immigration itself, the passions it instils since the 17th century when, according to local lore, born in Qingtian, emerges. Her mother had already have rarely subsided. some of the earliest globetrotters trekked across been in Italy for five years, although she had abso- If such arguments are effective in North America, Siberia to get to Europe. As the locals say, “if you are lutely no interest in going abroad. It was Pei’s father, they are certainly less effective on the other side of born in Qingtian, you are destined to leave.” working in a shoe factory, who had wanted to leave, the Atlantic, where the idea of outsiders assimilat- Located almost 500 kilometres south of but in the bureaucratic vagaries suffered by immi- ing into the general population takes on a more Shanghai and 60 kilometres from the coast, grants from time immemorial, only her mother had threatening tone. Perhaps nowhere is the debate Qingtian—barren, mountainous and landlocked— been given a visa to enter Italy. And so off she went. over immigration more contentious than in present- has never been a place of prosperity. For hundreds Where exactly? Pei does not know, but she sus- day Europe. Anti-immigrant parties have been of years, its biggest export has been people. pected it might be Venice, which she refers to as gaining power right across the continent, from the Ma is a professional journalist born and raised shui cheng, “the water city.” Her idea of it, gleaned rise of the UK Independence Party, now the third in Canada to parents who had emigrated from in part from a book, is not unlike that of any tourist largest party in Britain, to the anti-Islam Freedom China. She was introduced to Qingtian by her hus- bound for Venice on a cruise ship. She speaks to Party of Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, to Pegida band. As they returned to his ancestral home after Ma dreamily of bridges shaped like crescent moons in Germany, the Freedom Party of Austria and the death of his grandfather, she found the spirit and a beautiful city of stone, floating atop a glit- Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which came first in money being burned at his grave was in the form tering lagoon. When Ye Pei, her father and brother last year’s European Parliament elections in France. of euros. “It was important for Grandfather to have eventually obtain their visas to emigrate to Italy, These are the countries that belong to the foreign currency in the afterlife,” she says by way of she discovers not only that her mother is far from prosperous northern tier of Europe. Further south, explanation. “Even in death, the dream of making it Venice but that the family will not be living together. where youth unemployment has reached a stag- rich overseas was still very much alive.” Like those Venetian bridges of Pei’s imagination, gering proportion since the financial crash of 2008, How to explain a place where people are seem- one of the books greatest strengths is the way it the situation is equally as volatile. Perhaps most ingly obsessed with the dream of a life in Europe? elegantly spans the disparate worlds of China and notorious is Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, a More interestingly, Ma wonders why people from Italy. After offering a portrait of Qingtian, Ma brings particularly virulent nationalist party whose polit- Qingtian continue to leave, as China booms and a telling eye and a writer’s skill to the at times heart- Europe grapples with a debilitating debt crisis and breaking, and often humorous, stories of those who David Layton is a freelance writer. His latest high unemployment. make the crossing from one side to the other. novel, Kaufmann & Sons, will be published by For proof of obsession, witness the jewellers When we meet up next with Pei, the skin on her HarperCollins in the spring of 2016. who melt down 50-cent coins to make lucky pen- hands has started to peel, “flaked off like Parmesan

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 13 cheese,” from all the hours spent washing cups and extent invisible, many taking jobs in garment Canada’s own exclusionary legislation was not dishes at the bar where she works. Having dreamed workshops that, for instance, sewed “Made in Italy” much better, epitomized by the notorious head tax of being reunited with her mother, Pei has flown tags onto clothes produced and shipped from the imposed on every new Chinese immigrant entering halfway across the world to find herself alone in country they had left behind, China. However, Pei’s the country. Yet in provinces such as Manitoba, a strange, nondescript Italian town. As Pei sadly job working at a bar, no matter how arduous, points Marshall points out the telling ways in which points out, “In China, our family was split in two. to a new and more visible change in immigrant Chinese immigrants experienced fewer social and Now that we are abroad, my family is split in three.” patterns and the Italian social landscape. Pei steps legal restrictions. They could vote in elections; they This is because not only has she become separated into the very heart of contemporary Italian civiliz- could study and practise medicine at the University from her mother and brother, but from her father ation—a place where people come “not only to sip of Manitoba; they could obtain a liquor licence if too. He has had to find employment in a town other their cappuccinos and down their espressos but to they operated a café. They could also hire “whites” than the ones where his wife and son or daughter share life’s news with old friends.” to work for them, something denied to them in work. With a weak Italian economy, many Chinese British Columbia or neighbouring Saskatchewan For Pei, in retrospect life back in China was “easy.” have placed a bet that no matter how bad things until 1969. As she tells Ma, “I am no longer in a country where become, Italians will always shell out one euro for Marshall reconstructs a variety of personal everything is simple and straightforward.” This a cup of coffee. It also points to an answer for why stories from the historical record, based on letters, statement cuts against the common, photos and insights from hundreds perhaps easy assumptions about why of interviews she conducted with immigrants leave their homeland; it Collectively, ethnic Chinese who live offspring and local historians. As in also points to the changing dynam- Meet me in Venice, the book is at its ics of China itself, where the gross outside of China make up the largest liveliest and most affecting when it domestic product per capita has risen allows us into the minds and hearts twenty-fold since 1990. diaspora in the world. of her characters. Pei and her family, along with Take, for instance, Charles Yee other migrants from Qingtian whom who married Pauline, the young Ma describes in her book, are part of a narrative people from Qingtian still leave China for Europe. Ukrainian waitress he had hired at the café, bakery shared by immigrants all around the world. One Pei hopes that she will make enough money so and grocery he owned in Roblin, Manitoba. His out of every 33 persons in the world today, she that she and her parents can open up their own parents died when he was a year old. As a young points out, is a migrant. café or shop and become their own lao ban, their teenager he weathered the voyage from China to For Italy, the effects of immigration are becom- own boss. Canada, which in Marshall’s words would “trans- ing transformative. In 1990 just over a million Yet the broader question for them and for us, form this lone orphan into a tough merchant foreigners lived in Italy, which represented a mere mentioned by Obama in his speech, remains. Do Chinese nationalist, philanthropist, husband, and 2 percent of the country’s entire population. Today, they wish to stay and become Italians? Will Italians father.” These words are given extra emphasis if there are over 4 million foreigners, a number that let them become Italians? In an age of disposable one considers that when he and Pauline met, Yee does not include children born to immigrants, who SIM cards, cheap airfares and rising living stan- was already married and had a child with a woman by Italian law are not given citizenship at birth. dards in emerging economies such as China, will back in China. It is unclear if Pauline knew of his In the past, these immigrants were to some they send their children back for schooling or go past at the time of their wedding in 1929, but she back themselves when they have made enough and her three children were certainly made aware money? Meet Me in Venice offers no easy answers, of it when Yee’s Chinese grandchild came to live because many of those Ma follows, including Pei with them years later in Winnipeg. and her family, do not seem entirely sure them- As for Charles’s wife back in China, Marshall Read well selves. Are they migrants in search of work or immi- points out that “she and most wives accepted a grants seeking to build a new life in a new country? husband’s remarriage in Canada.” For Marshall, the The number of ethnic Chinese who live out- emphasis is not on any moral or personal scandal at side of China is estimated to be at least 60 million. but rather the way immigration served to both Collectively, ethnic Chinese who live outside of sever the past and yet offer a radically reshaped China make up the largest diaspora in the world. continuation. Forany great size. readingAlison R. Marshall’s at Cultivating any Connections: sizeThe What one learns very quickly in Cultivating Making of Chinese Prairie Canada shifts our atten- Connections is the fact that when speaking about tion to a different continent and another time—in the history of Chinese immigration to Canada, one this case the Canadian prairie provinces beginning is essentially telling the story of Chinese male immi- in the late 1870s. This allows us to see not only gration. Due to legal, social and financial obstacles, some differences but also some interesting similar- the society Marshall portrays is essentially one of ities with present-day experiences and patterns of bachelorhood even for those who, like Yee, were Chinese immigration. already married back home. For instance, in 1920 Historically, Chinese immigrants gravitated eastern prairies Canada, out of 4,000 Chinese men to coastal communities, continuing occupations fewer than 20 had wives. such as the laundry services and cooking they had Many, especially those few Chinese women learned while working aboard ships. Cultivating who came to Canada and often did not speak Connections examines the experiences of those English, suffered from isolation and loneliness, who journeyed inland toward the heart of North especially during the long and often brutal prairie America and offers us fascinating glimpses into a winters. little known chapter of Canadian history. And yet for all that, a fierce determination to Winnipeg became the geographical centre of succeed animates the stories in both books. Even prairie Chinese Canada. Torontonians who like to before the era of air travel and cellphones, these quote the United Nations statistic that half of the men and a few women were constantly moving city’s inhabitants were born in another country across the continent in search of better prospects, might be surprised to learn that Winnipeg reached from west to east and back across the ocean. Some this proportion in 1921. returned to their homeland but many others chose Winnipeg’s Chinese immigrants came not only to stay, overcoming the racial prejudices and eco- from the more populous British Columbia but also nomic hardships that existed then and, to some from California, many crossing at the Montana bor- extent, exist now. The harsh, overtly racial laws der to escape the institutional racism in the United banning or limiting Chinese immigrants may have States, specifically the American 1882 Chinese changed, but these two books offer a spotlight into Exclusion Act, in force until 1943, which prohibited the hidden worlds of the past and present that citizenship and entry of most Chinese. many of us ignore. visit14 the new reviewcanada.careviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada DONATE

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$36.99 paperback 220 pages Name Suite/Apt. 978-1-55458-966-1 Studies in Childhood and Street City Family in Canada series Province or State Country Postal/Zip Code E-mail Telephone Fax With Children and Youth: Emerging NH1505 Please bill me! My cheque (payable to the Literary Review of Canada) is enclosed. Theories and Practices in Child and Charge my Visa or MasterCard. Youth Care Work Kiaras Gharabaghi, Hans A. Skott-Myhre, and Card number Expiry Mark Krueger, editors Signature With Children and Youth provides a snapshot of emerging theories and perspectives in the field of child and youth care across North America. Child and Fax or mail completed form to Literary Review of Canada, PO Box 8, Station K youth care practice and theory, it is argued, is based Toronto on m4p 2g1 • fax: 1-800-635-5255 • tel: 416-932-5081 fundamentally on engagement across generations, email: [email protected] cultures, and social positions. To subscribe online, visit www.reviewcanada.ca/sub2015. WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY PRESS If you do not wish to receive correspondence from the LRC or other organizations Available from your favourite bookseller or call 1-800-565-9523 (UTP Distribution) unless it pertains directly to your subscription, please check here www.wlupress.wlu.ca facebook.com/wlupress| twitter.com/wlupress

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 15 Sabotage Ruins Walk, Louisbourg if you threw your shoe into the machine of the world We share an apple on the point. if you have a shoe I carve Swiss Army slices while if we all threw all the shoes at once, angry waves gnaw the shore. jammed its great cogs and pistons, if it groaned and gradually slowed. Wedges pinched between thumb and blade. She munches idly, if the trucks pulled over, and the drivers abandoned them, toeing spiders in the sand. if they went home to their families. if you ate what was in your cupboards or your garden The breeze holds all the rage of the if your cupboards were empty Atlantic. Traces of gunpowder you went to your neighbour, your friend, your auntie, flare my history-tickled nostrils. if a stranger fed you. Beside us children in period dress if for a day or a week chase geese. Above is a sky if for a week or a month we turned out the lights and dusk fell like leaves, that has forgotten how to laugh. if we listened and let our eyes adjust if we threaded together our fingers David Huebert looked across our tables and saw one another if we could see clearly, in the falling dark. if no one showed up for work if the magnificent glow of the grocery stores and the shopping malls was extinguished, if the coal plants sputtered Answering Rilke’s their trails of smoke tapered and vanished, if the smog diminished and the stars came out Sonnets to Orpheus if the moon called you outside if you didn’t have to get up early. Sadness of all life, life of all sadness — pouring death into fourteen lines, if the car engines stalled you poured it well, smooth and steady, and no one stopped for gas. twisting just so to catch the drip. if the buses ceased to rumble and squeal if the subways sighed to stillness. But I pity your ecstatic butterfly — if the fluorescent bulbs ceased their buzzing, clutched in the grip of some poetic hiccough, the batteries failed, and the fans went quiet arrested flutter of the diaphragm. if the turbines and the dams and the generators quit if we decided we didn’t need them I pity your fountain mouth, for a day, or a week. your sleeping ear, your blackened, aging chin. if the pipelines could drain, an end to extraction and pumping And I pity your monuments, if thousands of barrels per hour lingered in the ground so lonely, so unerected. mingling with the sour gas, the bedrock and sand, if someone approached the pipes sprawled like huge dead fish I pity the lyre — its indefinite, and struck a gleaming side with an empty fist soundless echo. Its player: if it rang and reverberated like a gong. tired fingers, tired eyes, if it found the tuning fork of the railroad, a pure tone, nothing more to look back for, if the ringing infiltrated the cities and the small towns, yet the song goes on. the tired fields and forests, if it danced over the lakes and rivers, David Huebert and slowly diminished, if we all heard it, if it prepared us for silence.

Basma Kavanagh

16 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Stanza Is the Italian Word for Room

(on benedict’s retirement, how i learned to stop worrying and love the catholic church) It is so holy to be old. (Vires meas ingravescente aetate non iam aptas esse.) My grandma in her white carpet stanza refuses to install track lighting (it’s tacky) to highlight the glitter in her dying eyes.

Opa shared his final stanza with two strangers, crippled fingers scrawling fugues on scrap paper, unable to unfold his fingers over the keys.

Oma in her condo marvels at the skytrain, popeye pizza and hoards dietary supplements in her kitchen drawer.

Uncle Morris in the Okanagan sun stanza still smiled when his sister-in-law whispered chess into his large lobed ear while Aunt Barbara refuses to visit, walking with one glass eye in the empty lots in Lumby where she said his spirit lived.

Then Uncle George just dying in his diapers, losing his dreams of a whites only golf course as a swift fingered filapina sponged his slack limbs.

Finally you, benedict, your shoulders bent forward in heavy red, a supplicant posture, just another broken holy father.

Jennifer Zilm

Basma Kavanagh is a poet, visual artist and letterpress printer originally from Nova Scotia and now living in Brandon, Manitoba. She produces artists’ books under the imprint Rabbit Square Books. She is the author of the chapbook A Rattle of Leaves (Red Dragonfly Press, 2012) and of Distillō (Gaspereau Press, 2012). Her new collection, Niche, is forthcoming from Frontenac House Press in fall 2015. She is currently reading Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics by Rebecca Solnit, The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, edited and introduced by Ilan Stavans, and Fungi of Switzerland, Volume 1: The Ascomycetes (as we head into morel season) by Josef Breitenbach and Fred Kränzlin.

David Huebert, of Halifax, is a PhD student at Western University. David’s first book of poetry, We Are No Longer the Smart Kids in Class, will be published by Guernica Editions in fall 2015. He is currently reading The Silence of the Lambsby Thomas Harris, Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud and Les fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire.

Jennifer Zilm lives in East Vancouver where she works in libraries and social housing. She is the author of the chapbook The Whole and Broken Yellows(Frog Hollow Press, 2013). Her first full-length collection, Waiting Room, will be published by BookThug in 2016. Some of her recent reading adven- tures include Braided Skin by Chelene Knight and Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil by C.D. Wright.

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 17 Impossible Journey In Martha Baillie’s novel, a German photographer looks for Nature freed from history. Jamie Zeppa

thrillingly and jarringly bare, stripped down to the through thrift shops and over Skype, her parents, The Search for Heinrich Schlögel elementals of rock, ice, water. Driven by a romantic a doctor and an engineer in Germany, develop a Martha Baillie desire for the sublime, nature without culture, the gambling problem, lose all their money and die Pedlar Press land stripped of horrors only humans can generate, within months of each other. She appears at first to 237 pages, softcover Heinrich stops frequently to photograph what he have some luck in assembling her archive: a journal ISBN 9781897141632 sees. A perfect composition (like all art) promises is preserved by an anarchist working in Toronto; him an experience of the transcendent, “the experi- an 1875 adventure novel from a Munich bookstore ence of time as indivisible.” turns out to be Heinrich’s own copy; a half-page of einrich Schlögel, son of a prosperous But a photograph is still time bound: it is “a his writing is posted on a website entitled “Did You German hop farmer, and his sister Inge moment removed from the natural flow of time Lose This?” But then she undercuts her credibility Hfirst encounter the Arctic as children and made to point backward.” And while offering by including a dream as evidence. in the early 1970s, in books. Inge begins teaching us images of a stark, wild, seemingly untouched As her presence comes to seem far-fetched, herself Inuktitut from a kit she found in the school landscape, Baillie ultimately reminds us that all impressionistic, illusory, Heinrich’s impossible cafeteria, and Heinrich, at his sis- journey becomes more elemental ter’s urging, reads the 1771 journal and real. And yet it is through the of Samuel Hearne. How has Heinrich emerged after archivist that we come to under- The mode of this encounter— stand the context of Heinrich’s through text—is at the heart of 30 years, only two weeks older, and encounters on Baffin Island, the Martha Baillie’s new novel, The meaning of his visions, and how Search for Heinrich Schlögel, which why are his ears filled with a rushing histories and landscapes are con- explores how our understanding sound, like ice melting? structed out of stories, longing, of a place is written and bound— lies and omissions. Like Heinrich, inescapably, often cruelly—by the archivist first came to Canada our own histories. Baillie, author of the Giller landscape has been marked by human activity. Like hoping to discover a “pristine wilderness.” Like Prize–nominated The Incident Report, a novel told Inge, Heinrich cannot encounter the Arctic without Heinrich, she encounters a geography she cannot in 144 “reports,” has here created a beautiful and its colonial history. At some point on his trek, he read—“Beyond the town, forest spread in all direc- highly original work, layering postmodern nuance stops to photograph a lost snowmobile glove and tions”—and after three days in Kirkland Lake, she over a deep bedrock of myth and colonial history. feels his camera become a relic. His map becomes catches a bus back to Toronto. Inge Schlögel’s interest in the Arctic is at first unreliable. Hearne himself appears, and Heinrich Heinrich eludes her desire to define him, as she purely linguistic, but another book she discovers has horrific visions of historical encounters. As his eludes ours. will trigger depression and a suicide attempt: the two-week food supply runs out, he follows a hare How has Heinrich emerged after 30 years, only diary of Abraham Ulrikab, one of eight Inuk taken through what geologists call an erratic—a stone two weeks older, and why are his ears filled with a from Labrador to Germany in 1880. It matches a deposited by a glacier far from its source. When rushing sound, like ice melting? (It may well be ice headline on a scrap of newspaper Inge once found he emerges from this apparent hallucination, it is melting. Sarah, his Inuit landlady, tells him, “You in the seat of a sleigh: “Family of savages from the 2010. think water is running when no water is running. Frozen North draws large crowds at the Berlin Zoo.” We learn of these mysterious events from the But you hear good. The cold is not like before.”) Heinrich, however, perseveres in his own quest heavily footnoted reconstructions of Heinrich’s The teacher in me wants to explain Heinrich’s for the North, not yet able to see that he is pursu- archivist, a German architect living in Toronto, who mystery, to label it (magic realism, say) and reduce ing something created out of his own background, began her search after seeing a remarkable photo- it to some form of “it means.” But then I remem- his reading, his fears and his longings. He accepts graph in The Globe and Mail. We, too, are search- ber Tolkien’s essay on the dragon in Beowulf, in an invitation from a travelling Canadian to hike in ing—not just for Heinrich, but for the identity of the which he argues that myth is “at its best when it is the Arctic and arrives in Frobisher Bay in July 1980. archivist, and for something to hang on to, to call presented by a poet who feels rather than makes His new friend, however, has changed his plans; truth, as we sift through the letters and journals and explicit what his theme portends; who presents it Heinrich will have to walk alone. And already, his notes that make up the novel. incarnate in the world of history and geography, as romanticized idea of the pure, empty North is being Every answer turns into another question our poet has done … For myth is alive at once and challenged: in the Hudson’s Bay store, he finds a about the nature of history, art and truth. What, for in all its parts, and dies before it can be dissected.” book on residential schools: “I have bought a book,” example, drives the archivist to “decipher, elaborate, Revealing, puzzling, dazzling, The Search for he writes in his journal. “It is surrounded by silence. speculate, turn upside down, reconsider, arrange, Heinrich Schlögel resists reduction, rewards reread- The ravens keep talking. I cannot think of anything classify”? What does she want from Heinrich? She ing. It draws you forward, as narrative should, but to say.” herself wonders: “Am I leading an irresponsible life, ultimately unfolds in you like poetry, with images With a tent, camping stove and enough food for given how little time is left? Storms decimate one so vivid and powerful they cannot be paraphrased. twelve days, Heinrich sets off for the Turner glacier, coast after another … What I want from Heinrich Some are horrifying, like Heinrich’s hallucinogenic immersing himself in a landscape that is at first is immense. Something immense is required and vision of residential school abuse; some have the time is short.” clarity of a black-and-white photograph; and some Jamie Zeppa is author of a memoir, Beyond the Sky An obsessed and occluded figure, she goes to remain inexplicable, irreducible, undissectable, and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan (Random great pains to validate the historicity of Heinrich, like the final glimpse we have of Heinrich emerging House, 2000), and a novel, Every Time We Say while dropping truths about herself that sound from a subway station in Toronto before disappear- Goodbye (Knopf, 2011). increasingly fictional. As she is pursuing Heinrich ing again.

18 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Hugh Made Me Love You Marina Endicott’s comedy of small-town manners is told in many voices. Jack Kirchhoff

especially pertaining to suffering, hope and fear. Stratford who went on to a successful and lucra- Close to Hugh (Also one from Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, tive career in U.S. television, and Della Belville, Marina Endicott a memoir about reuniting with a long-lost father by an artist specializing in sailboats, who is Elle’s Doubleday Canada the U.S. writer Nick Flynn.) mother and wife of the improvident and possibly 477 pages, hardcover Close to Hugh is more densely populated than unfaithful Ken. Hugh, Newell and Della first met ISBN 9780385678605 Endicott’s other fictions. There are multiple char- as children, when they were all, for one reason or acters in The Little Shadows, a vaudeville romp set another, partly raised by Ruth. Hugh’s own mother, in the pre–First World War Canadian west, but that Mimi—an actor, performance artist, Warhol associ- he first thing to note about Marina novel was focused tightly on the adventures of the ate, Trudeau girlfriend, television personality and Endicott’s Close to Hugh is the book’s performing troupe of the title, three sisters who take all-round larger-than-life celebrity—was rarely Tvoice, which is alive with impish humour, to the stage to escape life on the farm. Similarly, available for maternal duty. The trio has shared a deep reservoir of humanity and a gift for quirky, Good to a Fault and Open Arms concentrated many life experiences and regard themselves as evocative phrasing. These have always been mostly on their lead characters. It is a truism to say foster-siblings. strengths of this Edmonton-based writer’s work, that all novels are ultimately about relationships, Hugh and Ivy gracefully falling in love provides even in her first novel, the straightforward first- but Close to Hugh is built on an extensive web of the main plot line. Ivy is in town because Ansel person Open Arms, but in Close to Hugh, her fourth them, various and constantly shifting. Burton, once Newell Fane’s mentor (and seducer), novel, she has taken things to is conducting a master class on another level: it is more droll, Endicott is dealing with big ideas and Sweeney Todd with the advanced more insightful and even bet- theatre students at the local high ter crafted than its predecessors. profound issues, including in this case school. “[Hugh] hates—hates— … Every sentence in this book made Burton, a plump and aging queen me want to read the next one. love, death, sex, charity, obligation, who hates Hugh right back in The wondrous thing is that spades, doubled and redoubled.” Endicott employs this distinctive youth, aging, faithfulness, infidelity, art, The older actor’s preening ego and voice entirely in the service of her vicious tongue make him easy to characters, a collection of stu- cooking and … well, pederasty. dislike, but for Newell’s sake, Hugh dents, teachers, actors, artists and tries to get along with him—apart other vivid creative types living in Peterborough, The action in this deliciously complex novel from slugging him at that “meet the faculty” party. Ontario. The sections of the novel featuring the takes place over one rainy week in October. Hugh, Also in the master class are a selection of teen- eponymous Hugh Argylle—an art gallery owner— owner of a small downtown art gallery, is a do- aged actors, artists and designers, several of them are not written in the same style or tone as those gooder in the best sense of the term. He employs the children of the novel’s adult players: Jason the sections about, say, Elle, the teenaged daughter the elderly Ruth as a gallery assistant, although costume designer, for instance, is the son of Hugh’s of one of Hugh’s friends. The student Orion—tall, there really is not enough work for her. He is ex-wife Ann, by her second ex-husband. The teens, good looking, talented and gay—is portrayed in devoted to his mother, who is living out her last and their relationships with each other and with entirely different terms from, say, Ivy, the visiting days in a hospice, where he visits her at least once their parents and the other adults, ring absolutely 50-something actress who finds herself falling in every day, and often several times. He quietly sup- true. They are a tangled mass of love, lust, ambition, love with Hugh. ports Jasper, the tipsy owner of the antiques store talent, and that peculiarly teenage blend of self- Then there are the sections devoted to Della, next to his gallery, and goes out of his way to give confidence and deep-seated insecurity. one of the major players in this comedy of small- a break to a young local artist. Late in the novel he A central event is Hugh’s 30th anniversary din- town manners, that are written in a fractured, first- makes a list of everyone’s problems and what can ner party for Della and Ken, which he is determined person, stream-of-consciousness form that most be done about them: “What’s Wrong? MIMI: dying. to make memorable despite—or perhaps because resembles free-verse poetry. This is wholly new to What Would Help? 0—nothing—nada—zip.” Ruth is of—the couple’s marital woes, and even though he Endicott’s writing and perfect for the conflicted “old, poor.” What would help? “affection, $$.” Jasper must take time out from preparations to smooth Della, whom another character describes as having is “poor, old, drunk.” What would help? “$$ + AA?” over a master-class contretemps, and even though a layer of calm “like custard skin, gently set over a A brief but significant aside related to the title: he is suffering increasingly painful headaches after seething mass beneath.” But if the vocabulary and “Hugh lives his life in the second person,” Endicott falling from a ladder. Nevertheless, the dinner points of view change, the essential warmth and wit writes, “never quite sure whether it’s Hugh or you. party, prepared with assistance from Ivy and the of the prose are always present. Either one demands, accuses, requires responsibil- teenagers, is a wonder. Think Babette’s Feast times As in her previous work, Endicott is dealing ity. You’ll do it—or was that Hugh’ll do it? You/Hugh two, or maybe three, and without the Protestant with big ideas and profound issues, including said everything would be okay. Why did you leave? restraint. in this case love, death, sex, charity, obligation, Where did Hugh go?” Pretty much every possible The novel ends on an upbeat note (in a section youth, aging, faithfulness, infidelity, art, cooking pun on “Hugh” is made somewhere, either in the headed Hughphoria) with Hugh and Ivy in bed, and … well, pederasty. (There are two incidents in text or in section headings: Hugh Can Take It; Hugh Ivy sleeping contentedly and Hugh calmly reflect- the book of an older man having sex with a boy, Belong to Me; Hughtopia. I thought that this would ing on the future: “You’ll be fine,” he thinks. “You both of which, in different ways, provoke anguish wear thin, but thanks to Endicott’s ingenuous per- have people to look after. You won’t, Hugh won’t and anger.) Chapters, divided into the days of the sistence and endless imagination, it does not. abandon anyone … All of them. All of us who will week, open mostly with quotes from Buddhist texts, The novel’s characters fall into two groups, mid be dead, all of us, if the fabric of the world is not life and student, almost all of them either artistic or kept whole by constant never-ending vigilance … It Jack Kirchhoff is an arts writer and editor living in theatrical. Two on the adult side are of particular is not over yet, not yet, not yet. At least, that is the Toronto. interest to Hugh: Newell Fane, a one-time star at story you tell yourself.”

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 19 The Freedom of Alzheimer’s A daughter discovers the surprising joy of dementia. Janet Hepburn

from her plate into her mouth. All these things hit “Oh my … I love listening to you talk.” The Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and Me home for me. Some were details I had mercifully “You love what?” Cathie Borrie forgotten, but they were more than balanced out “Listening to you talk.” Simon and Schuster by the lovely memories, the intimate connections “Oh, I thought I heard you say, I love to 228 pages, hardcover made through words and phrases that were, like look into your voice.” ISBN 9781476792514 Jo’s, not ones my mom would ever have spoken in “I love that, too.” earlier times. There is freedom, a poetic sensibility that must come from stepping outside of the world Borrie credits her mother with bringing the he Long Hello: Memory, My Mother and as we know it. Alzheimer’s arrives with a new sense lyrical quality to this story and we see that she is Me is a lyrical memoir—a hands-on, all-in, of reality. As Borrie shows us, we would all do well right through their dialogue. Borrie herself has a Tprofoundly sensitive story that recounts to listen more carefully, to respect the person who truly poetic style, especially when she writes of Cathie Borrie’s thoughts and emotions as she cares is uttering what sounds like absurd nonsense, to place. for her mother, Jo, through her last years with resist the urge to correct them and guide them back There is much in The Long Hello that covers time Alzheimer’s. Jo, widowed, is in her mid eighties to our reality. outside of the seven years that Borrie cares for her and is able to live alone in her own mother. As her mother goes back home thanks only to daily visits Borrie references dance throughout, in in time, it seems Borrie too begins from Cathie. As the disease pro- to remember her life before her gresses, a constant rotation of live- ways that reveal her overall philosophy mother’s Alzheimer’s. She shares in caregivers come and go, hired bits of her childhood and teen to help but never staying long of caring for a loved one with years, of her mother as she was enough to gain the confidence of throughout her earlier life. She Cathie or Jo. dementia—learn to follow, not lead. talks of her grandparents, too. Borrie holds nothing back in Through all of this we see refer- her writing and so we come to know the joy she Asked by Fannie Kiefer of Shaw TV to explain the ences to birds. They show up everywhere. Birds are discovers in the caregiving role. In an interview title, Borrie said “I learned at my mother’s side that even there on the cover. We envy them their song, she describes how she started to view her mother’s something I was going to do was say hello to every their flight, their freedom. They elicit ideals of long- world not as diminished but as a parallel one, pos- phase of her illness and not goodbye.” ing and exile. Birds often appear in conversations sibly even elevated. As for her frustrations, “I try Borrie holds a Master of Public Health, a degree between Borrie and her mother, especially when Jo not to think about where I am and what I do all day in law and a certificate in creative writing and is an is worried about having to leave her home. or the things I used to do and miss most—working, accomplished ballroom dancer. Her love of dance studying, canoeing, movies. Men.” Yet we never and music lends a decidedly musical quality to A Steller’s jay lands on her balcony railing. feel that she is whining or complaining. We see the her writing. She references dance throughout, in Cocks its head right, left, right. detail of her everyday life in a beautifully unsenti- small ways but also in ways that reveal her overall “I can stay here? This is my home?” mental narrative. Borrie’s writing style makes us philosophy of caring for a loved one with demen- “Yes, forever.” feel we are friends, sitting together with a cup of tea, tia—learn to follow, not lead. Probably my favourite “Will I get the birds?” sharing our family stories. passage is this: “Yes, all of them.” She laments the loss of relationships, “I tuck her “I can’t see how I would move from a place in. Drive home. Eat two bowls of cereal. Crawl into Men complain the women try to lead and like this that I own and that I’ve been in for bed. Swaddled inside flannel sheets I hunker down that’s why we go the wrong way on the dance the last ten years and know it perfectly.” under heavy wool blankets and wedge a pillow floor, why feet get stepped on … I don’t know “That’s right.” tight between my thighs, rocking back and forth. how to do nothing. Be empty enough, quiet “And it knows me.” Into this slipped-down place drifts the memory of enough inside to wait. To listen. a man’s scent,” and we understand her loneliness, I can’t believe someone else will take care There are several references to the sea, “pewter- admire her dedication to her mother’s quality of of the leading. Take care of anything. punched. Moody,” with its images of immortality life. and vastness and sightings of freighters—passage I can’t help but feel a strong connection with Who does not sympathize with the need to nur- through life. Borrie. The details that she shares of her mother’s ture and guide and how that somehow morphs into decline in cognitive and motor skills draw me back difficulty letting things progress naturally, doing “There’s a huge freighter coming in. I won- to my own mother’s journey just a few years ago: nothing while all around us our world seems to be der where it’s from.” her resistance to “strangers” in the house to help outside of our control? Somehow Borrie was able to My mother squints. with her care, her insistence that she was being understand this and change her approach while her “It’s coming in too full, you can’t see the poisoned, her sadness at not being able to come mother was still alive. Plimsoll line.” home with me each time I visited, suspicion over The Long Hello is written in a series of short money and who was looking after it, asking to see chapters resembling entries in a journal. This style The Long Hello should be in every library, long- her loved ones who had long since died and, toward allows for great intimacy. We are able to hear Jo’s term care facility and nursing home. It should be the end, forgetting how to use utensils to get food voice, appreciate the beauty in her phrases. available to anyone who cares for someone with Alzheimer’s. It is easy to read—clear and short, Janet Hepburn lives in Port Dover, Ontario. Her “How was your day?” [asks her daughter.] meaningful and honest, written in beautiful lan- novel, Flee, Fly, Flown, was published in March “Today I was down at the horse barn. It guage. The inevitable ending is managed with 2013 with Second Story Press. came with lots of blessings.” grace, love and respect.

20 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada a national festival of politics, art and ideas

SPUR WINNIPEG MAY 7–10, 2015

We live in a world of constant connectivity, where opportunities to create and sustain vibrant communities have never been greater, and yet MIT technologist Sherry Turkle says that our relationships have become more simulated than strong, wider but weaker. Spur 2015 asks how we might reimagine civic and social life to achieve greater engagement.

Born Bad? In Conversation with Racialized Communities Chris Hedges Sat, May 9 | 11:30 AM Sat, May 9 | 8:00 PM Sat, May 9 | 4:00 PM Always pursuing a sort of ethical realism, It’s all too easy to think of Canada as a novelist Graham Greene wrote, “Human From student and environmental protests beautiful quilt of diversity, but pull back the nature is not black and white but black in Canada to the outrage manifested cover and race relations are burning at the and grey.” Despite Greene’s nuance in Ferguson, Missouri, to the Occupy seams — the many murdered and missing we nevertheless gravitate to mutually movement, it seems that resistance and Aboriginal women in Canada, Maclean’s exclusive dualities, yo-yoing between revolution are in the air. In his newest book, branding Winnipeg Canada’s most racist a Hobbesian human nature where life Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of city, the northward spread of protests and is brutish and brief and the Gandhian Revolt, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, civic outrage that exploded a er 18-year-old virtuous human nature. The argument is best-selling author and activist Chris Hedges Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police as old as humankind, but in an increasingly goes so far to argue that we are on the verge o cer in Ferguson, Missouri. claustrophobic and connected world it is worldwide rebellion. as important as ever. American activist and public intellectual Dr. Join Hedges and Peter Ives, professor Cornel West, founder and executive director John Helliwell, co-director of the Canadian of political science at the University of of Islamic Social Services Association Institute for Advanced Research Programme Winnipeg, for a conversation about what Shahina Siddiqui and activist Clayton on Social Interactions, Identity and Well- it takes to wage rebellion from the historic Thomas-Muller of the Mathias Colomb Cree Being, joins Adam Muller, University of revolutions of the past to the popular Nation in Northern Manitoba discuss today’s Manitoba, to debate the black and white of uprisings we are witness to today. racialized communities with nuance, truth being born bad. Moderated by broadcaster and insight. Rosanna Deerchild, host of and political commentator Charles Adler. CBC’s “Unreserved,” moderates. Tickets and passes available at spurfestival.ca/winnipeg

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May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 21 Trading Fair The slippery slope of industry self-regulation. Joseph Heath

that you trust the butcher, it is because you Constructing Private Governance: know that there is a government inspector The Rise and Evolution of Forest, in every single slaughterhouse, with the Coffee and Fisheries Certification power to close down the entire operation Graeme Auld in response to even a single infraction. Yale University Press The trust that you have in your doctor, by 323 pages, softcover contrast, is not achieved primarily through ISBN 9780300190533 government regulation and oversight, but rather through professional self-regulation Coffee on the part of doctors. Gavin Fridell This serves as an important reminder Polity Press that not every market failure needs to be 180 pages, softcover resolved by the state. Market actors them- ISBN 9780745670775 selves often have an interest in correcting these failures (or can be persuaded to develop such an interest). So the mere fact lthough we spend a great that there is pollution, or safety problems, deal of time teaching children to or exploitation, does not automatically Athink critically, it actually does mean that the government needs to get not take a great deal of insight or educa- involved. It is far too easy to make the jump tion to uncover moral flaws in the world from saying “Someone should do some- around us. For example, when it comes to thing about this!” to saying “The govern- the market economy, no one has much dif- ment should do something about this!” ficulty coming up with an objection to the This observation is one that acquired arrangement under which affluent western greater significance toward the end the consumers line up to pay $3 for a fancy cup 20th century and into the 21st, thanks to of coffee, while the farmers who grow the waning enthusiasm for the regulatory state coffee beans earn less than that in a day. and, beginning in the 1980s, the growing Indeed, the hard part is not really spot- power of political actors committed to ting these problems, but figuring out what deregulation. In part this was due to the to do about them. Some people are quite very success of regulation, particularly in optimistic that solutions can be found. the areas of environmental and consumer The great economist Kenneth Arrow once protection. Since the low-hanging fruit declared that “when the market fails to was the first to be picked—the regulations achieve an optimal state, society will, to that would produce the greatest benefit at some extent at least, recognize the gap and the lowest cost were the first to be imple- non-market social institutions will arise mented—over time regulation began to attempting to bridge it.” Would that it were so! typical of mid 20th-century optimism about our extend into areas where the ratio of benefits to costs Arrow made this remark in 1963, in the context capacity to respond effectively to market failure. did not favour state action quite so obviously. of a prescient discussion of health care, where he With respect to health care, his thought was that The problems are well known: the law is a blunt pointed out that the combination of uncertainty some people genuinely do have specialized med- instrument; compliance and enforcement costs can and ignorance made it very difficult for ordinary ical knowledge, and other people are not only in be significant; regulation creates rigidities, making commercial transactions to take place in this area. need of this knowledge but are willing to pay good it difficult for market actors to respond flexibly to (As a patient, you have little choice but to trust money for it. Thus there is a mutually beneficial new circumstances. Furthermore, with increased your doctor. But if your doctor is just trying to make transaction that is simply waiting to occur. If the international trade, market actors began to encoun- money, like Adam Smith’s infamous “butcher and parties are unable to organize this transaction using ter problems stemming directly from the limits of baker,” then why ever would you trust your doctor?) the resources of ordinary commercial law, then state power. (Canada can set the terms for logging Arrow’s response to this was in many ways they will begin casting about for other institutional in its own forests, but it has no power over the way arrangements that can make it happen. that timber is cut in Indonesia.) As a result of these Joseph Heath is a professor in the Department of What is striking about the example of doctors forces, western governments became both less Philosophy and the School of Public Policy and and healthcare services is that the “non-market” willing and less capable of regulating. Social activ- Governance at the University of Toronto. His most institution that arises, which allows the parties to ists therefore became more and more interested in recent book is Morality, Competition and the Firm: work around the market failure, does not require working around the state, in many cases trying to The Market Failures Approach to Business Ethics government intervention. In this respect health care deal directly with private actors to resolve some of (Oxford University Press, 2014). is quite different from other markets. To the extent the problems caused by poorly structured markets.

22 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada This confluence of circumstances gave rise that has been filtered and bottled by the Coca-Cola hardships suffered by farmers as a result of failures to the development of what is known as private Company. So obviously price competition is not the in the Central American coffee crop, ostensibly governance—namely, initiatives taken by private major driving force in this market. This gives rise, caused by leaf rust, are actually the consequence actors that start with the bare bones rules that gov- quite naturally, to the idea that “ethical” sourcing or of “an unequal and unjust global coffee economy ern market exchange, then layer over them a more production might become a part of brand identity, forged through the actions of imperialist and auto- demanding set of constraints aimed at improving or that it might even become the brand. cratic states over hundreds of years of colonialism, environmental stewardship, improving labour Thus the second major template for the emer- slavery, and the expansion of the capitalist world standards, and so on. Perhaps the most important gence of a certification system is that it might system.” form of private governance to emerge in the past function like a brand—underwritten, ultimately, Perhaps needless to say, Fridell does not have few decades has been the voluntary certification by the willingness of consumers to pay a premium much enthusiasm for the forms of private govern- systems in certain sectors. Most consumers are for products that have the certification. This is the ance that interest Auld. Indeed, he tips his hand at aware of these because of fair trade coffee (and, to business model that has predominated in the cof- the outset of the discussion, when he chooses to a lesser extent, organic vegetables). But voluntary fee sector, particularly with the various fair trade refer to them as “neoliberal governance” initiatives. certification has also been an important force in programs, which are an instance of what Auld refers And yet, for a book that is entirely focused on the forestry and seafood. to as a local-first initiative. injustices of the world system (including, incident- Some of the pioneering academic work on Now, of course both timber and coffee are ally, the complicity of nation-states through the the subject of self-regulation has been done traded internationally, the latter in great quantities. “coffee statecraft” they practise) Fridell says almost by a klatch of Canadians: Ben nothing about his own framework Cashore, Graeme Auld and Steven To the extent that you trust the butcher, of assessment. One gets the sense Bernstein. Auld’s new book, that his visceral reaction to the con- Constructing Private Governance: it is because you know that there is a trast between affluent western con- The Rise and Evolution of Forest, sumers and impoverished coffee Coffee and Fisheries Certification, government inspector in every single farmers is so strong that it relieves is a comparative study of the rise of him of any sense of the need to voluntary certification. Although slaughterhouse. produce an argument to show that aimed at an academic audience, the former are exploiting the latter. it contains material and analysis that will also be of The primary difference in strategy, Auld observes, More problematically, Fridell does not feel any interest to anyone with a practical commitment to is that forestry is subject to significant barriers to need to show that the inequalities at work in the improving and extending business self-regulation. entry in both production and retail, which means coffee sector are somehow greater, or more egre- This is primarily because private governance has that it is very difficult for new firms to get into the gious, than the inequalities that characterize the not been an unequivocal success in any of these business. Coffee, on the other hand, has very low production of any other agricultural good. Even areas, and so it is useful to compare the different barriers to entry at every level, in growing, roasting a simple comparison chart between coffee and, sectors to see what patterns can be found, and and retail. Fishing, by contrast, is more like forestry, say, corn, rice and maybe cacao, would have been which strategies have proven more or less effective. because even though the industry has relatively low highly informative. In order for any of this private governance to get capital requirements, most states manage access Coffee does have two features that might make it off the ground, there must be some deviation from through long-term permits or quotas, which are at least slightly distinctive. The first, as Auld notes, the intensely competitive conditions that govern already fully allocated. is that it has very low barriers to entry. It is simply a standard commodity market. If products are It is obvious once Auld says it—but only after he not hard to get into the coffee-growing business. entirely undifferentiated, then the only thing left to says it—that these barriers to entry are going to be This makes the market intensely competitive, and compete on is price, which in turn does not leave a crucial determinant of which strategy is effective. thus puts constant downward pressure on the price much room for social responsibility. The lowest- With low barriers to entry, certification systems of green beans. The second feature is that it takes cost producer simply wins. can emerge like brands, in a local-first way, simply between two and five years for the bushes to reach There are, however, many markets where these because there is very little to stop someone from maturity, as a result of which the market is more conditions do not prevail, and so producers have setting up a coffee shop, roasting their own beans, likely to suffer from periodic gluts and shortages. some respite from the tyranny of the lowest price. sourcing them from suppliers who produce it under What this all adds up to is that an individual The first deviation occurs in markets where there conditions that they approve of. With forestry, by coffee farmer, working a small plot of land, is is significant international trade. As is well known, contrast, because of barriers to entry, there is little going to be leading a poor and precarious exist- states impose a wide range of restrictions on goods choice but to work with existing firms. Thus one ence, because the value of the product is not very that are exchanged internationally, and so mar- must approach the entire initiative from a different high and the prices are volatile. And yet one is ket competition is almost never straightforward. angle, in order to get buy-in from the major indus- tempted to describe this, not so much as an injus- Furthermore, different states impose vastly dif- try players. tice, but rather as just an immediate consequence ferent regulatory conditions, with developing This is just one of many insights to be gained of engaging low-productivity, non-mechanized, countries often having much laxer standards. This from Auld’s book, which contains a wealth of monocultural agriculture. provides an important point d’appui for the emer- material, all presented in a cogent and accessible The standard prescription is to change the gence of certification standards, since not only format. He has done an admirable job of separating conditions of production, through mechaniza- western consumers, but often western retailers, out the different threads that make up the complex tion and increased scale, intensification through not to mention western governments, are less skein of initiatives and interests in each of these dif- green-revolution technology, and diversification than enthusiastic about purchasing goods that are ferent sectors. If there is any criticism to be made, to protect against volatility. Yet Fridell appears to produced under conditions that would be illegal it is perhaps that he takes the social science thing reject all of the latter expedients, in favour of some domestically. too far, producing an analysis so dispassionate combination of price supports and welfare-state Because of this, an arrangement similar to the that it is difficult to tell which overall approach he transfers. This is a controversial position, and yet it popular ISO standards (issued by the International favours. I came away with the sense that he leans is not clear how he gets there. Given that the entire Organization for Standardization) provides one in the direction of the forestry model, because it book is motivated by social justice concerns, one template for the emergence of certification systems. has achieved an outcome closer to what regulation would like to see the structure of the moral argu- This is the model that has developed most clearly might achieve. The local-up initiatives, by contrast, ment laid out explicitly. in the forestry sector, for example, with the Forest are not only plagued by a hodgepodge of overlap- And yet if Fridell’s ideal seems utopian, the real Stewardship Council certification program, which ping labels and certification systems, but are also world of private governance that Auld describes provides one instance of what Auld refers to as a often limited in their ambitions. falls desperately short of what we require. The easy “global-first” initiative. If Auld plays his cards a bit too close to his chest, optimism that Arrow expressed, when he suggested The second major deviation from the competi- Gavin Fridell is very much the opposite. His recent that non-market institutions will naturally arise to tiveness of standard commodity markets involves book, Coffee, which appeared in Polity Press’s correct flaws in existing markets, remains more of the role that brands play in consumer markets. It “Resources” series, is actually not so much about a pious hope than an empirically supported gener- has often been observed that, although tap water coffee as it is about the injustice of the world, as alization. There can be no doubt that people try to is free, consumers have demonstrated a willing- illustrated by the case of coffee. Fridell is the sort create these institutions, but the obstacles that they ness to pay as much as $8 per litre for tap water of writer who finds it important to observe that the face are formidable.

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 23 Talk Therapy A memoir of psychoanalysis reveals its transformative power. Kwame McKenzie

Union, the birth of Cool Britannia The Last Asylum: A Memoir and Tony Blair, Britain going to of Madness in Our Times war in Africa and the Middle East Barbara Taylor for oil, the rewriting of the civil Penguin contract and a wholesale trans- 295 pages, softcover formation from a post-war collec- ISBN 9780143191599 tivist mentality to an increasingly individualistic society. And you might want to hear Taylor’s views arbara Taylor’s new on all this especially because she book highlights a very was a Canadian outsider, a femin- Bpersonal inner journey. ist and historian with a trenchant It is about how a person can way of commenting on contem- move from dreaming about her porary mores. therapy session like this: But all these things are either absent or heavily downplayed. I arrive at my session fit to Instead, The Last Asylum focuses be tied, as the saying goes. on the problematic aspects of I lower myself on to the couch and go very Things improve thanks to psychoanalytic ther- Taylor’s childhood, as well as her relatively brief still. Then I hurl into action. I throw myself at V apy, treatment by a psychiatrist and two admissions stints in a psychiatric hospital. As she delves into [her therapist], punching him in the chest, bit- to a psychiatric hospital. But of these, it is psycho- this past, the memories are often raw with passion ing his face, kicking his balls, twisting his arms analysis that Taylor flags as pivotal. “Psychoanalysis and anger. Only gradually does she come to under- until they snap. Finally, in an ecstasy of fury, works, when it works,” she tells us, “by transferring stand and acknowledge the demons that make I devour him wholesale, beginning with his the patient’s ‘illness’ on to the analytic relationship her life a misery. Classically Oedipal, she tells us head. Afterwards I lie satiated, shaking, listen- so that its mechanics—the unconscious fantasies she loved her father, despite the fact that he was “a ing to him breathing quietly behind me. The and fears that drive the illness—can be exposed domestic tyrant of the old school,” and despised her tumult subsides, my heart rate slows; another and, over time, dismantled.” mother. She and her mother were “locked together kind of image appears in my mind’s eye. In her case, this means ending a litany of failed in a death grip.” As Taylor reached adolescence, the heterosexual relationships and resuming an aca- relationship gradually became a “war over Daddy” And eventually leave that therapy years later demic career that had gone off the rails soon after and “a nightmare of envy and hate.” like this: her breakdown. Today she lives with her same-sex All of this is related by Taylor with eloquent civil partner and children in the United Kingdom honesty, but I cannot help but wonder what would V: You’re telling me you can manage per- and is a distinguished academic historian and have happened if her considerable writerly powers fectly well without me. award-winning feminist author. If you are con- had been streamed differently. Could her thoughts T: Hmm … “perfectly well” might not be cerned that I should have given you a spoiler alert, have been less focused inward and more focused the phrase you want. do not worry. The book is not about this narrative. outward? Would The Last Asylum have then been a V: Oh! … ever the pedant! “Well enough” It actually ignores the brilliance of Taylor’s career, seminal autobiographical account of her compel- then. Will that do? her academic awards, her full professorship at the ling journey as well as that of an outsider making T: Yes. Well enough. University of London and what happened after sense of tumultuous social change? Perhaps that is V: Good. It’s time. her triumph over mental illness. Very Canadian? a book she may still want to write. Perhaps. But we need to look at the book that she has The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our The Last Asylum is a must-read for people actually written, and since the culminating pur- Times is a story of salvation. After moving from interested in the field of psychoanalysis. If you are pose of The Last Asylum seems to be its defence of Canada to do postgraduate studies at the London searching for a full account of Taylor’s life, however, psychoanalysis, the reader must pay close attention School of Economics, Taylor struggles to complete you will come away wanting more. Similarly you to the strategies she uses in attempting this—for The her doctoral thesis and has her first breakdown. might wish she had elaborated on the careers of her Last Asylum is not just a personal narrative. At times There are multiple problems over the next two astonishing Welsh communist father, who took part Taylor steps back to summarize the recent history decades including depression, suicidality and sub- in the Spanish Civil War, and her mother, who had a of psychiatric trends in the United Kingdom, a stance misuse. lasting impact on human rights in the Prairies. summary that she employs not just to give her own “I was literally my own worst enemy,” she writes, You may also feel you want to learn more of story wider resonance, but also so that she can pass “simultaneously victim and victimizer, brutalized Taylor’s view of the United Kingdom as it went judgement on what she sees as the contemporary and brutalizer.” through significant social changes. She was in betrayal of the mentally ill by the medical establish- Britain during the race riots of the late 1970s and ment through its emphasis on community care. Kwame McKenzie is the medical director at the ’80s, through the relationship of Charles and Diana, The two elements of her tale—the personal and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and a the dismantling of the unions and the miners’ impersonal—do not sit easily together, not least professor at the University of Toronto. strikes, the fall of Thatcher, the rise of the European because Taylor expends little energy connecting

24 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada the two. Most significantly, she presumes that her cooperative individuals, families and couples in readers will be aware of the nuances of psychiatric order to help society develop equality and demo- methods and their evolution, when in fact it is likely cratic living. that many will not. In essence Adler’s psychotherapy is outward It is a repatriation of Let’s provide what is hopefully some useful focused: it is about the person in their context and context. Most laypeople know psychoanalysis is a includes an understanding that service for others a way of life. system of therapy that aims to treat mental health and compromise is a way to build your sense of problems by investigating the interaction between community and make your life complete. In Adler’s —Frank Weasel Head unconscious and conscious parts of the mind. It theories there is more to life than sex and more to sees mental health problems as conflicts between the world than you. His work is more about making basic drives that are mainly unconscious and our yourself happy by making the world a better place, ideals, morals and values that are mainly conscious. rather than making yourself happy by understand- What is less widely familiar is that there are ing where your drives come from and accepting more than 20 different schools of psychoanalysis. those drives. In broad strokes, each I do not question one of these schools that getting in touch presumes that per- The true triumph of with your childhood sonality is part inher- misunderstandings of ited and partly due to humanity is not what life actually treats men- what happens to you tal illness. As Taylor in childhood, although can be offered to the and many others have the relative emphasis argued, it is useful and differs depending on select few in defeating for some vital. The issue the school. Childhood for me is whether there is considered import- their internal demons. is a richness that is lost ant because how we It is what a civilized by looking inward in lead our life is partly this way. Does the type governed by irrational society can equitably of increased narcissism drives that we develop that much of psycho- during this time. In offer to the many. analysis promotes really adult life, conflicts help us move forward as between our irrational a society? drives and our morals or ideals lead to psycho- Taylor does not grapple with such topics dir- logical problems. If the drives are deep-seated, then ectly, although she is honest enough to allude to trying to resolve them may be difficult. Through some of them. She is quite clear, for example, about psychoanalysis, a skilled therapist can help us bring the social-climbing aspects of psychoanalysis, at our inner conflicts from our unconscious to our least within the fashionable circles she inhabited We Are Coming Home conscious, thereby permitting some sort of psycho- at the time that she entered analysis: logical resolution. Repatriation and Several of the dominant forms of psychotherapy The left-wing intelligentsia of 1980s London are based on Freud’s ideas. He developed a number was infatuated with psychoanalysis. Hovering the Restoration of Blackfoot of theories that included the Oedipus complex as a on the edge of this world, listening to people central tenet and the idea of libido as the source of comparing analysts, swapping couch gossip, Cultural Confidence hate, aggression, guilt, neuroticism, a death drive I yearned to join in … or so I thought. My “ill- and eroticism. Some observers have argued that ness” was surely just an alibi. Edited by Gerald T. Conaty Freud saw the whole world through sex-tinted glasses. That was probably completely in line with In addition, at several times she refers to the his patients who were trying to release themselves expense of her own psychoanalytic journey and The eight authors of We Are Coming from the straitjacket of their 19th-century upper the fact that the sort of intensive treatment she class Austrian lives. And it resonated further, given received was not even remotely accessible to the Home are those who directly participated the extent to which Freud’s theories have become vast bulk of Britain’s population. She also goes in the return of more than 200 sacred fundamental to western culture’s understanding of out of her way to stress what she sees as the social objects from the Glenbow Museum to the individual. inequities lurking within contemporary psychiatric the Blackfoot people. Featuring voices That means many of us take Freud for granted, thinking. But this scattered treatment hardly adds although if you spend any time working or living up to a nuanced critique of the social aspects of of the Blackfoot alongside accounts outside the West you soon come to realize that psychoanalysis in societies such as ours, especially written by museum and government Freud has little traction there. This is partly because from the pen of a seasoned cultural historian. officials, the book highlights the complex the focus on sex and libido is considered distasteful The fact that Taylor is alive, well and writing and personal act of repatriation and the in many non-western contexts. In particular, the great books is a gift to society. It is a testament to idea of even figuratively wanting a sexual relation- her hard work and that of psychiatrists, psycholo- potential it holds for the reinvigoration ship with your parents is considered anathema. gists, psychotherapists, psychiatric nurses, social of cultural practices. But there are other potential reasons for this lack of workers, and her friends and fellow patients in the influence as well. In cultures fashioned on the ideal United Kingdom’s National Health Service. 390 pp, 30 colour photos of service to the community, theories that make Still, as I finished The Last Asylum I also could people think about themselves rather than others not help but wonder what sort of book it might paperback and ebook available are not welcome. have been if Taylor had had psychoanalysis that $34.95 There are psychoanalytical traditions more focused her energies outward into society rather in harmony with these principles. I will focus on than inward toward her drives and childhood. After an important alternative tradition here, although all, the true triumph of humanity is not what can be there are others. One of Freud’s students, Alfred offered to the select few in defeating their internal Order at www.aupress.ca Adler, split from Freud and developed a theory of demons in ways that may merely extend their nar- individual psychology that can only be described cissistic urges. Instead it is what a civilized society as a value-based model of personality develop- can equitably offer to the many. It is about us put- ment and philosophy of living. Adler’s psychology ting our energy into thinking about we rather than aims to encourage the development of healthy, me.

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 25 Emblems of Adversity How the Poles and the Jews are memorializing their troubled past. Michael R. Marrus

is fraught. Once home to the largest Jewish agglom- contributions, are actively working on Jewish Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland eration in the world, stretching back a thousand themes in several disciplines, about large cities as Erica Lehrer and Michael Meng, editors years, Poland became, and is still stigmatized by well as smaller communities, and draw upon newly Indiana University Press many Jews today as, the world’s largest Jewish cem- available archival materials in European and Jewish 304 pages, softcover etery—full stop. Its Jewish past is often understood languages. As the chapters suggest, this is a lively ISBN 9780253015037 as an unending tale of racism and complicity in field. More than this, the editors venture that these the Jews’ greatest catastrophe. The Israeli prime multidisciplinary and pluralistically engaged Polish minister Yitzhak Shamir (born in a village now in and Jewish scholars, together with those of other rom many quarters, Polish observers Belarus) once said that “every Pole sucked anti- backgrounds, have put Poland at the cutting edge report a powerful interest in Jews throughout Semitism with his mother’s milk.” The country is of such inquiry internationally. Ftheir country. Media attention is palpable, widely believed to have no Jewish future. Its towns Examining what is left of Jewishness in Poland publications multiply, building projects extend and cities, once with as many as a third or half today, and drawing on the French historian Pierre from monuments to restorations Nora’s notion of lieux de mémoire, and Jewish tourism is booming. contributors investigate “how Beginning in the 1980s with public Neighbourhoods have been reconstructed memory intersects with space in debates about the Holocaust, and ways that are culturally, socially, intensifying after the fall of com- and cemeteries cleaned up—often politically, and economically con- munism with efforts to recover a structed.” Put simply, spaces are suppressed history, journalists, without a single living Jew being things one can visit, and through artists, academics, Catholic cler- continuously present in the restored the study of which we can better ics and politicians of many stripes understand what remains. The have been steeped in a post-1989 “Jewish space.” authors discuss the Jewish past in inquiry about how Jews should cityscapes, neighbourhoods, syna- fit into the narratives of Polish gogues, tombstones, property rela- society. Centrally at issue are questions of plural- their populations made up of Jews, finished the tions, memorials, reconstructions and museums, ism, Polish national identity and how Poles should war with none at all, or only tiny numbers. Many among other themes. Significantly, the authors’ envision their country’s future. Accompanying this of these survivors, as historian Jan Gross noted in understanding of the Jewishness of “Jewish space” interest is the exploration of Poland’s linkages with several shattering books, were murderously set encompasses the plurality of Jewish expression. As the wider world, an affinity excluded in the Soviet upon by their non-Jewish neighbours, some during the editors note, their approach seeks “to break out era. Jews have prominently joined this conversa- the war itself, and others, incredibly, massacred of predetermined, normative views of Jewishness to tion—not just the tiny but articulate remnants of after the end. Almost completely forgotten has explore how history and identity inform each other, Polish Jewry inside Poland, but also Jews from been the other side of this story: older traditions of raise questions about difference and solidarity, and abroad, many of them part of a diaspora whose tolerance and extended periods of mutual respect, recognize that Jewish culture is shaped in a field of families once lived in Poland. The latter, it has been unmistakable possibilities for Jewish creative enter- interactions with other cultures.” From the vantage estimated, constitute as many as 70 percent of the prise, and rare but inspiring cases of rescue during point of Poland, the editors see their work as part of 13 million Jews in the world today. For Poles, whose the Holocaust. Seventy years since the end of the a national discourse, looking to the construction of three and a half million Jewish compatriots were Second World War, there is much healing still to do. a new, post-communist Polish identity. almost entirely annihilated during the Holocaust, Part of the new interest of Poles and Jews in The authors of these chapters are certainly and for Jews, dominated not only numerically for each other’s past has been a flowering of academic aware of the dangers of a nostalgic approach to many years by those from Poland and the impres- inquiry, of which this book is one expression. And their subject, in which the recent Polish interest sive civilization that they created, how the two com- at least one unspoken implication is that sympa- in or appreciation for Jews is exaggerated, mem- munities see each other is a matter of considerable thetic explorations of Jewish life in Poland, such ories of wrongdoings are impugned and the Jewish historical import. Put briefly, many see interactions as those collected in this book, will in themselves past is romanticized. Most obvious, it is import- of Poles and Jews as part of a serious debate about contribute to an appreciation of ethnic hetero- ant to remember, as Stanisław Tyszka observes, where Poland has been and where it is heading geneity and a strengthened Jewish presence in the that “the so-called renaissance of Jewish life in today. country. Editors Erica Lehrer and Michael Meng, Poland is, for the most part, a renaissance without Poland is also a place where, as noted by the the former a specialist in collective memory, eth- Jews.” Neighbourhoods have been reconstructed, Canadian-born ethnologist and chief curator nography and museology at Concordia University synagogues rebuilt, and cemeteries cleaned up of the recently inaugurated Warsaw Museum of in Montreal, and the latter a historian at Clemson and sometimes reconsecrated—often without a the History of Polish Jews, Barbara Kirshenblatt- University in South Carolina, assembled this book single living Jew being continuously present in the Gimblett, the relationship of the two communities as an outgrowth of a summer seminar in 2010 at the restored “Jewish space.” In such an environment, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington misunderstandings and sometimes historical Michael Marrus is a senior fellow of Massey College DC. For this publication, they were able to draw manipulations are inevitable. and the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor on veterans in the field as well as a young cohort A good illustration may be found in Geneviève Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of scholars from the United States, Germany Zubrzycki’s essay on Auschwitz, distinguishing of Toronto. His most recent book, just being com- and Poland. Strikingly, the authors testify to the between Auschwitz I in the town of Oświęcim, pleted, is a critical reflection on the lessons of the remarkable interest in Jewish matters in the Polish the core camp of the huge Auschwitz-Birkenau Holocaust. academy. Polish scholars, present here in several complex, established originally for Polish prison-

26 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada ers after Poland’s defeat by Germany in 1939, and any understanding of the city’s rich and impressive Research now extends to provincial towns and even Auschwitz II, known as Birkenau, in the nearby Jewish past,” he writes. Looking at the intersection villages. Often emptied of Jews, such places are now village of Brzezinka, the main site of the murder of the broad expanses of John Paul II and Jerusalem reclaiming a Jewish presence that many thought of 1.1 million Jews. In these neighbouring places, avenues, which once bisected the Ghetto, gone forever. And in these localities memories of Poles and Jews cultivated conflicting narratives. Jews often differ, depending on particular histories For years, under Soviet tutelage, Poles commem- one would find vestiges of prewar Jewish and circumstances. Local entrepreneurship plays orated “Auschwitz” as the site of “the martyrdom life: a building that used to be a school, a a role as well. Some community leaders, Monika of the Polish and other Nations,” eliding the two ruin that used to be a prison, the site of a Murzyn-Kupisz reports in her study of Chmielnik, camps and effectively obliterating the Jewish sig- famous yeshiva. And if one looks down on 32 kilometres south of Kielce in central Poland, nificance of the place. Conflict over the symbolic Warsaw from one of the many high-rises, have come to see the recovery of a Jewish pres- significance of “Auschwitz” involved the efforts one sees clearly that the city has two street ence as a way to put their communities “on the of Catholic Poles and Jews to assert parts of these grids, superimposed on top of one another map”—to attract visitors, secure outside funding sites for their understanding of their own com- and ­co‑existing uneasily. Prewar streets, and stimulate new enterprise. In Chmielnik, muni- munities’ victimization. Zubrzycki’s essay illus- their traces visible through the facades of a cipal authorities took it upon themselves to launch trates how, under the intense gaze of the media, few surviving houses, lead nowhere. Modern a “Day of Jewish Culture” as part of the town’s opposing sides presented conflicting communal thoroughfares cut a building in half. The 450th anniversary events. Thereafter, this venture memories. On the one side, this blossomed into regular festivals was done through a large cross called “Meetings with Jewish at the Carmelite Convent over- Poland became, and is still stigmatized Culture,” with klezmer musicians, looking the Auschwitz core camp, exhibitions, lectures and meet- following the placement of a by many Jews today as, the world’s ings with Holocaust survivors. A group of crosses on one burial Polish design firm, we learn, has site in Birkenau, both of which largest Jewish cemetery—full stop. been commissioned to restore the assailed Jewish memory; while, dilapidated local synagogue. The on the other, at Auschwitz I and English anthropologist Jonathan II, the most egregious instances involved boister- palimpsest is difficult­ to read. And in the rare Webber, a veteran of the study of post-war Polish- ous demonstrations of Jewish youth as part of the places where the ancient text is clearly visible, Jewish encounters and a promoter of several such March of the Living, with “flags, banners and wind- not obscured by contemporary writing, the projects himself, recounts his work with the village breakers (some with yellow stars on their sleeves), difficulty is replaced with moral discomfort. of Brzostek in southern Poland—an effort to restore a white and blue human sea occupying the very the community’s ruined cemetery in honour of space where more than one million Jews were sent Several contributors insist that the effort to those whose graves were desecrated in the past to their deaths”—seen as aggressive, nationalistic recover Poland’s Jewish heritage is not infatuation and others who were murdered nearby and who moves to take over both sites. Zubrzycki’s obser- with a locally flavoured kitsch. Much more often, had no final burial ground. Even in out-of-the-way vations, buttressed by opinion surveys, archival Jewish themes intersect with post-communist, places like this, Webber underscores, the energy research, ethnographic inquiry and extensive inter- sometimes national or even international perspec- and the will exist to recover painful and repressed views, illustrate the tangled character of some col- tives. Writing about Szczecin (formerly Stettin), parts of the past, and achieve a measure of recon- lective memories, but also the power of traditional Magdalena Waligórska demonstrates how intricate ciliation. Projects like that of Brzostek, he writes, symbolism born in catastrophe and the slow shifts are the multi-layered myths of Poles, Jews and “can amplify personal and communal identities in in the public understandings of both Poles and Germans in this once-German city whose Jews fruitful ways.” Jews as generations pass and are Near the end of this book, exposed to new realities. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Michael Meng’s examination There is another story: older traditions reflects admirably on the Museum of the rebuilding of the Warsaw of the History of Polish Jews—a neighbourhood of Muranów, of tolerance and mutual respect, stunning new landmark in the the bulk of which was the site Polish capital that has arisen as of the Warsaw Ghetto and which unmistakable possibilities for Jewish a result of a partnership between was destroyed by the Germans creative enterprise, and rare but inspiring several levels of Polish govern- with artillery, flame throwers and ment and mostly, although not explosives, illustrates the way in cases of rescue during the Holocaust. entirely, Jewish donors from out- which successive post-war efforts side the country. The museum at repair helped expunge mem- stands on prime “Jewish space”— ories of Jewish life and Jewish suffering. Under were expelled and murdered in 1940, and which in the heart of the former Jewish quarter, adjacent the Polish People’s Republic, politicized architec- was “recovered” for Poland after the war. From to the magnificent monument to the Warsaw ture took over, imposing succeeding visions on her research on Kazimierz, a historical district of Ghetto Uprising by the Warsaw-born Jewish sculp- the obliterated Jewish landscape. The goal was to Kraków, Erica Lehrer sees an acceptance of Jewish tor Nathan Rapoport, whose work is in the style of show “the historic triumph of Communism over heritage as part of a broad process of constructing socialist realism. capitalism by showcasing the historic movement a Polish future in the wake of communism. The As with the many issues raised in this volume, from the dark, dirty, cramped, and chaotic capital- idea is that interest in Jews is one way of creating the museum presents no master narrative, and ist city to the light, clean, spacious, and orderly a post-communist national identity in pluralist because of the great destruction that accompanied socialist city.” Muranów, Meng notes, “was now terms, “a counterweight to rightwing rhetoric that the Holocaust, it has relatively few artifacts. What to be a cheerful, bright, and colorful place for the stresses the longstanding, dominant concep- it has in abundance, however, is what is described working class.” The result, I am told by present-day tion of Polishness as essentially Polish-Catholic.” in this book: “constructive engagement” of Jews residents of Warsaw, was a drab, boring, lifeless As such, reconnecting with Jews meshes with and Poles, and the creation of a “trusted zone,” as neighbourhood, covering the ashes and rubble forward-looking, democratic and cosmopolitan Kirshenblatt-Gimblett says, “for engaging difficult of a vibrant pre-war Jewish existence. Konstanty impulses within Polish society—part of a broad subjects.” Gebert’s eloquent essay discusses the same geog- movement for the construction of a modern, liberal raphy and the same reconstruction with consider- national identity. In Łódź, Winson Chu sees a vari- ably more colour and feeling—and less honour ant on this theme—an effort to place the wartime Practise conversation conservation. to the rebuilders. To Gebert’s keen eye for urban Jewish ghetto squarely within the German sphere form, traces of Jewish existence lie just beneath the of the Polish-German-Jewish triad, constantly on LRC back issues surface, waiting to be revealed. Warsaw, he writes, the lookout for the “Good Pole” and the emphasis and subscriptions is a palimpsest—a text written on top of another of common Jewish and Polish victimhood under are available at as with a parchment of the Middle Ages. “None of the wartime domination of the Germans. this palimpsest nature of Warsaw is apparent at Tellingly, investigations of Jewish presence are www.reviewcanada.ca first sight, yet all of this is of crucial importance for not limited to major cities like Kraków and Łódź.

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 27 28 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Broken Promised Land A place where homosexuality is legal but still unsafe and scorned. Ian Smillie

gay Namibians (to where?) created a convenient Apart from this lacuna, three things bothered me Namibia’s Rainbow Project: bogeyman that could be blamed for the scourge of about this book. The first is the author’s repeated Gay Rights in an African Nation HIV/AIDS and for the government’s failure to deal charge that TRP—a drop-in centre that concen- Robert Lorway with it. trated on building self-esteem and providing Indiana University Press Lorway takes considerable pains to debunk information about safe sex—did nothing to solve 155 pages, softcover the idea that homosexuality is “unAfrican,” docu- the economic plight of its clientele. Had that been ISBN 9780253015204 menting its long historical trajectory in Namibia. a TRP objective, however, it is hard to know how it But he also shows that by creating a “safe space” might have been achieved amid the country’s deep- for LGBT youth and by giving them a sense of seated poverty. The second is the author’s repeated ike human rights more generally, the purpose and pride in their sexuality, the Rainbow assertion that attempts—by the government of rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans- Project turned the face of these young people Namibia and others—to “[harness] desire as an Lgender people subsist on rocky ground in toward a new, bigger world. Unfortunately, it was a ethical substance” are part of a wider interaction much of Africa. In Namibia’s Rainbow Project: Gay world they could not hope to join, except fleetingly between liberal democracy and global capitalism Rights in an African Nation, anthropologist Robert through exploitive gay sex tourism and a western that reproduces and intensifies “a constellation of Lorway examines the issue of gay rights in one sexual economy that commodifies black bodies. social inequalities.” Beyond the sex trade inspired African country, Namibia. While it may have given young men confidence by Namibia’s tourist industry and the absence of Perhaps the first thing to say about LGBT rights in their sexuality, their “liberation” did little to jobs for young people, evidence that liberal democ- in Africa is that the challenges Lorway describes in improve their economic situation. With Namibian racy and global capitalism have anything special to Namibia are, sadly, far from unique. In the Central youth unemployment rates rising from 58 percent do with the plight of the Rainbow Youth is scanty. African Republic, Gabon, the Democratic Republic in 1997 to 75 percent in 2008, undereducated young The third thing I struggled with is the author’s of the Congo and a small handful of other coun- men wearing lipstick and mascara and looking “like style. Case studies of Hanna, Winston, Travis and tries, same-sex sexual activity is legal, although it they were auditioning to be the cast of Priscilla, others are well done: these people are remarkable, would perhaps be more accurate to say that it is not Queen of the Dessert” would be more than a little poignant and sometimes even a bit funny as they illegal and exists in a shadow world that is subject disadvantaged in any job queue. struggle and worry and debate the issues they face. to frequent violence and constant danger. South Christianity—a genuine western import (never But too often the narrative hits a brick wall like this: Africa is the only country on the continent that assailed by President Nujoma)—presented prob- “These flourishing identity politics form the ground recognizes same-sex relationships and marriage, lems for the Rainbow Youth in its censure of from which the Rainbow Youth cultivated their and it is the only one that has enacted LGBT anti-­ homosexuality. Often very religious, young people practices of freedom. They also display the effects of discrimination legislation. True, in some African struggled with the question, “How can I be gay and neoliberal logics that give primacy to the resources countries, such as Namibia, laws against homo- a Christian?” Religious condemnation, however, of self-determination over the everyday material- sexual activity are not rigorously enforced, but seems not to have been overly strident in Namibia; ities that constitute their oppression.” in others, fines, corporal punishment and prison at least the hate-filled, anti-gay North American I am not an anthropologist. Maybe this is the terms abound. In a few—Sudan, Mauritania and evangelicals so common to the Ugandan narrative way anthropologists write. I have read that sentence Nigeria—the death penalty remains on the books make no appearance in Namibia’s Rainbow Project. and the pages around it ten times. I think Ry Cooder and debates about its possible introduction in Unfortunately, our understanding of homo- said it better in his song, “Across the Borderline”: Uganda have galvanized pro- and anti-LGBT rights sexuality in Namibia is constrained by the book’s dreams rarely come true in a broken promised camps for the past two years. limitation to a fairly narrow circle of people and land; the cost of getting there is high, and when Non-enforcement in Namibia has not translated institutions within the ambit of the Rainbow you arrive, you discover that “you’re still just across into anything like safety or “rights” or even much Project. Most of the youth we meet are uneducated the borderline.” Having struggled to reach a kind happiness for that country’s LGBT community. and come from very poor families. They are almost of sexual self-awareness, the Rainbow Youth were Lorway’s book centres on an LGBT rights non- exclusively “feminine males” and lesbian women often, once they arrived, no more than a step away governmental organization, the Rainbow Project, who dress as men. from where they began. It might be a metaphor for and the seven years he spent in Namibia working The women—many of them still girls, really— African independence. with TRP and more than 200 of its “Rainbow Youth.” are constantly subject to unwelcome male atten- If the message of the book is that human rights The problems Lorway describes are manifold: tion and sexual violence, and often wind up with are not enough, there is another one: self-awareness­ first, a refrain from government, most notably in the unwanted or at least unplanned children of their and human rights are not the same thing. And nei- person of Namibia’s first president, Sam Nujoma, own to care for. And the males, frequently in thrall ther of them necessarily correlates with jobs. The that homosexuality was unknown in Namibia until to what Lorway calls a “foreigner fetish,” too often truth is that LGBT rights in Namibia are limited, it was imported by westerners, hell-bent on wreck- find themselves used and abandoned by the white fragile and regularly transgressed by homophobic ing the country’s traditional society and values. men they meet. An alternative for them is danger- thugs holding high office and by violent men stalk- Nujoma’s xenophobic vilification of homosexuality, ous rough sex from “straight” Namibian men. But ing the shebeens and beer parlours of Windhoek. which culminated in threats to jail or even deport we are told almost nothing about these shadowy One of the oddest things about the painfully slow straight-acting Namibian men who mistreat the evolution of human and political rights in Southern Ian Smillie, an Ottawa-based development con- Rainbow Youth, and so we never actually get Africa is that the governments of countries such as sultant and writer, is the author of Freedom from beyond TRP, its feminine males and its masculine Namibia, which for decades suffered the absence of Want: The Remarkable Success Story of BRAC, the lesbians. If there is a wider homosexual culture human rights more keenly than most, have become Global Grassroots Organization That’s Winning the in Namibia—less camp and less poor than the so oppressive themselves toward the minorities Fight Against Poverty (Kumarian Press, 2009). Rainbow Youth—we are told little about it. under their protection.

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 29 Green Eyes Does jealousy have a redeeming upside? Suanne Kelman

Jealousy Peter Toohey Yale University Press 272 pages, hardcover ISBN 9780300189681

ome researchers feel compelled to study disreputable neighbourhoods or Speople. Peter Toohey, a professor of clas- sics at the University of Calgary, is apparently attracted to disreputable emotions. He has already explored what the ancients called melancholy and we see as depression (Melancholy, Love and Time: Boundaries of the Self in Ancient Literature), before moving on to Boredom: A Lively History. While Melancholy explored the evolution of self- want to read this book with a computer at your also carry a complicating aura of sexuality. After a consciousness in the ancient world, Boredom had side: the black-and-white reproductions do not fairly exhaustive discussion of language, including a more ambitious aim: to rehabilitate boredom’s always do full justice to the paintings. Moreover, it Latin roots and the current British slang term “well reputation by revealing its positive effects on our is sometimes difficult to see what Toohey is describ- jel,” Toohey himself admits defeat to the extent of lives. ing without colour.) using the words “jealousy” and “envy” interchange- And now, in Jealousy, Toohey has turned his Nor does he neglect literature, science and his- ably in his text at times. attention to this feeling in the same optimistic tory. There cannot be many academics capable of In other chapters, he examines jealousy in sex- spirit. He asserts that it is “a potent means for the skipping from Ovid to Dante to Alain Robbe-Grillet ual relationships and families (I loved the story assertion of individual rights and the encourage- to John Le Carré and Alice Sebold, then detouring about Ingmar Bergman’s childhood plan to murder ment of cooperation and equitable treatment.” into psychological experiments, real-life murder- his sister); jealousy in animals and toddlers; differ- It would certainly be cheering to learn that ous love triangles, animal behaviour and Greek ences between the male and female experiences jealousy can sometimes be good for us, given its mythology. (Toohey has been quoted as saying of jealousy (established by MRI images as well as pervasiveness in art and life. Imagine the shelves that Jealousy is a “crossover” tome, adding that art); changing attitudes toward jealousy in history; of our libraries and the walls of our great art gal- “academics say it’s too popular and people say it’s anthropological considerations, notably Margaret leries if humans did not experience jealousy: no too academic.”) The ancient curses and spells alone Mead’s claims that among Samoans jealousy was Madame Bovary, no Anna Karenina, no Emma, no would justify buying the book: “do not allow Karosa rare and socially unacceptable; cures for jealousy Othello, no Cain and Abel, no Trojan War. Popular herself … to think of her [own] husband, her child, through the ages, and much, much more. music would be denuded of songs from “Frankie drink, food, but let her come melting for passion The two threads that will attract the most atten- and Johnny” to “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now” and love and intercourse, especially yearning for tion are Toohey’s wide claims for the role of jeal- to Sting’s “Every Breath You Take.” Opera seasons the intercourse of Apalos.” ousy beyond the private sphere—in the workplace would have to be cut by at least half—no Tosca, no Still, Jealousy is not just a learned and leisurely and as a spark for creativity, for instance—and, La Bohème, no Carmen. stroll through culture and history. Toohey begins, above all, his claims that the emotion can enhance Even the Bible would lose more than 50 verses, as he must, with the distinction between jealousy our relationships and lives. including at least part of the second commandment and envy. It is no easy task, and he defaults to a I find it hard to argue that jealousy is less import- (Exodus 20:5 and Deuteronomy 5:9), the one that quotation from an earlier book called Jealousy ant than Toohey imagines. The late novelist and concerns idols: “You shall not bow down to them by Peter van Sommers: “Envy concerns what you television host H.S. Bhabra pronounced fairly often or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a would like to have but don’t possess, whereas jeal- that the distinguishing qualities of writers are envy jealous God.” ousy concerns what you have and do not wish to and constant fantasies of revenge. Toohey reinfor- The book glories in the pervasiveness of jeal- lose.” He notes that the characteristic shape of jeal- ces that idea with a quotation from a poem by the ousy in our culture, past and present. In the visual ousy is a triangle, involving other people, whereas author, critic and poet Clive James, which runs in arts alone, Toohey leaps from Michelangelo to envy is dyadic, a straight line between you and a part: Vermeer to Edvard Munch, roping in 16th-century thing or a quality. lithographs and 17th-century woodcuts and little- It is a roughly workable distinction—except The book of my enemy has been remaindered known modern painters along the way. (You might that, in my experience, many of us secretly vis- And I am pleased. ualize some invisible, pseudo-parental authority In vast quantities it has been remaindered Suanne Kelman is professor emerita of the School of bestowing or withholding the rewards of this world, Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been Journalism at Ryerson University. She is the author which turns envy into a triangle, too. Moreover, in seized. of All in the Family: A Cultural History of Family a species capable of investing rubber and footwear Life (Viking, 1998). with erotic value, the lust for material goods can The poem concludes:

30 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada Soon now a book of mine could be remain- six-­person group marriage. It had a lot of influence as futile as the tepid baths, the whey and nitre, the dered also, in its day, both on couples who decided to follow its asses’ milk prescribed by the French psychiatric Though not to the monumental extent precepts (leading inevitably, in my own social cir- reformer Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirol in 1832. In which the chastisement of remaindering cle, to the breakdown of marriages) and on hopeful That is one of the reasons that the reader ends has been meted out young men who urged copies of it on practically up simply liking Toohey. His voice is appealing and To the book of my enemy … every woman they knew. the persona he adopts is both humorous and mod- But just supposing that such an event should Still, I knew about The Harrad Experiment, while est. He uses irony in reminding us that he cannot hold Ms. Zell-Ravenheart came as news to me. I cannot rise above the issue of jealousy in university facul- Some slight element of sadness, it will be imagine a reader who will not learn a great deal ties (where it runs rampant): “Academics are jeal- offset from this book. Toohey’s freewheeling cultural ous creatures. (I am, of course, a noble exception).” By the memory of this sweet moment. confidence has the happy effect of making the The new-hatched fan naturally wonders which book feel like a conversation, because the reader feeling or vice will next capture Toohey’s attention. I have quoted more of the poem than Toohey (this reader, at least) inevitably finds additional or Lust is already an over-plowed field. Gluttony could does here, because the second portion buttresses contradictory examples—and will object to some of certainly use a PR makeover, but a historical survey some of his scientific evidence. In an experiment his conclusions. would start to cloy long before the fall of the Roman called “the ultimatum game,” Empire, never mind that mod- psychologists offered a sum of Imagine the shelves of our libraries and the ern monstrosity, the bacon money to two people, to be div- sundae. So, vanity or pride, ided as the first player saw fit. walls of our great art galleries if humans perhaps? Anger? The researchers found that the It may be impertinent, but second players usually refused did not experience jealousy: no Madame I think Toohey should consider an offer of an unfair and inad- exploring grief. Few emo- equate amount of money, Bovary, no Othello, no Trojan War. tions today are so unpopular even though that choice left and enjoy so little respect. A them with nothing. That result replicates experi- I suspect that he will encounter objections as Russian psychiatrist once told me that she had ments with capuchin monkeys, who would hurl well from art historians incensed by some of his stopped practising because “North Americans rewards of food at their keepers if other monkeys interpretations of paintings. They may have a point. believe unhappiness is a disease.” Certainly were consistently receiving greater rewards for the To choose the most obvious example, his reading bereavement in Canada provokes a chorus of same activity. We are not the only species that cuts of Vermeer’s The Concert as a study of jealousy irritating Job’s comforters, exhorting mourners off its nose to spite its face. Toohey has to admit that involves a wafer-thin theoretical stretch. There are to move on, get therapy, shape up, pull up their jealousy’s effects are not always benign. three figures in the painting: a music master, with socks. Victorian widows were condemned to shun Still, I feel that he sometimes perversely under- his back to the viewer, a woman at the piano and all entertainment and wear black bombazine for plays the viciously destructive role that jealousy can a younger woman singing. It was far from obvious years; contemporary widows are urged to start dat- play in human lives. One real case that does not fig- to me that the pianist was jealous of the singer and ing before the tombstone is in place. It is the perfect ure in this book is the murder of Herman Tarnower the beauty, sexual desirability and even pregnancy candidate for rehabilitation through Toohey’s eru- by his lover Jean Harris. The piece of evidence that that Toohey detects in her. I felt strongly enough dition and wit. pretty well clinched Harris’s conviction was a long to look up some more orthodox criticism of the letter she wrote to Tarnower, who was dead before work, which established that whatever qualities he could receive it. It was an epistolary scream of the singer embodies, she is almost certainly not rage, against him and against the much younger pregnant. Dutch painters of the time did not con- Coming up nurse who had replaced her in his sharply limited sider pregnant women a suitable subject for art. affections. The violence and coarseness of her lan- It is an unusual criticism of an academic writer, guage dispelled the ladylike image she had until but I sometimes suspect Toohey of an excess of in the LRC then sustained during the trial—and indeed, her imagination. life. Jealousy, combined with a decade of the seda- Still, let me acknowledge that I learned a lot tives and amphetamines Tarnower had prescribed about painters and painting here. Art historians Why conservatives win for her, had destroyed the competent, superior, have another reason to resent Toohey’s intrusion controlled personality she had constructed with so into their territory: his appeal to many readers is Michael Adams much effort and pain. going to be much greater than theirs. His breezy To be fair, Toohey does cite horrifying instances explications of the works of Hieronymus Bosch Reading Carol Shields of murders and abuse. But, at the risk of playing and Artemisia Gentileschi and Meredith Frampton Marian Botsford Fraser the gender card, I think it is more difficult for a (I had never even heard of Frampton, and his paint- woman to see positive elements in an emotion so ing “Marguerite Kelsey” is a stunner) introduced Repatriated relics often based on a sense of ownership, sparked by me to works I would never have sought out for imagined observations and capable of culminating myself in academic tomes about brush technique Victor Rabinovitch in stalking and more extreme forms of persecu- and chiaroscuro. tion. And, for me, that somewhat dilutes Toohey’s Similarly, Toohey will lose points for it in the Toronto stories defence of jealousy’s positive influence on produc- faculty common room, but I greatly enjoyed Amy Lavender Harris tivity, relationships and even the social structure. the way he swoops into popular culture, link- To be fair, he acknowledges that jealousy rarely ing the uniquely dysfunctional Gucci family and Portrait of Norval leads to more just and equal social systems. the feuding sisters Joan Fontaine and Olivia de That is my only serious reservation about the Havilland with the Bible’s Cain and Abel, the Morrisseau book. I did find myself wishing that he had included Mahabharata and Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Lewis DeSoto a couple of examples that seemed obvious to me, Brothers. He even describes Mann’s book as “huge but that is really a form of praise: I wanted to see and intimidating”—the only indication that he ever Soros’s story his take on works and events that leap to my mind feels intimidated by a cultural work. when jealousy is the topic. Moreover, Toohey has the great strength of rec- Shawn McCarthy Thus, I cannot fault him for using the contem- ognizing that the present is not necessarily superior porary figure Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, to the past, which instantly raises him above the The walking cure priestess of the Church of All Worlds, in his discus- level of popular psychology books. He knows that Dianne Chisholm sion of polyamory, the most extreme form of open we do not have all the answers. His summary of marriage or possibly just sexual non-favouritism. treatments for jealousy implies that modern psych- Talking sports But people in my age group rather expect to see iatry is often no more successful than the magic an appearance in this context of the 1966 novel charms and herbs of the past. In Toohey’s handling, Christopher Dornan (and 1973 film) The Harrad Experiment, about a our modern therapeutic approaches seem almost

May 2015 reviewcanada.ca 31 Letters and Responses

Re: “Of People, Pride and Potatoes,” by Re: “Keep in Touch,” by Bronwyn Drainie mathematical equations and proposes an Arno Kopecky (March 2015) (April 2015) alternative paradigm. was pleased to discover Arno Kopecky’s n her review of my book Tell Everyone: Why We Science begins with a broad set of hypotheses Iendorsement of the key messages in my IShare and Why It Matters, Bronwyn Drainie and proceeds by eliminating those that fail book, Trojan-Horse Aid: Seeds of Resistance and suggests “what the social media universe seems experimental or logical tests, leaving a core of Resilience in the Bolivian Highlands and Beyond. to be best at, in terms of the common good, is as-yet unfalsified proposals that may be true, or at His identification of its oversights is also fair and to helping out instantly during enormous physical least useful, approximations. The idea that there be expected. However, I cannot resist pointing to a crises—earthquakes, tsunamis, floods and fires,” are immutable, mathematical laws of nature (such few of Kopecky’s own errors. but she doubts my contention that the bonds that experiments are repeatable with consistent First, his critique of my opting not to reside fostered by social media are “the glue that helps results, and logic can be used to analyze theories) full time in either of the villages misses my societies prosper and endure.” underpins this procedure. purposeful research design. The book was never There is a risk in underestimating the long-term In Orrell’s review and Unger and Smolin’s book, intended as an ethnography of the Jalq’a, research impact of novel forms of social action nurtured the multiverse is presented as an example of how that would have required Quechua fluency. Its by emerging communication technologies. When scientists’ faith in immutable mathematics leads ethnographic sketch serves as background for my Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a to absurdity. If scientists accept such moonshine “development anthropology” of the relationship white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, in as multiple universes, does this not indicate between indigenous farmers and the institutions 1955, few would have predicted it would become something rotten at the core? they encountered. As a side note, I do question a defining moment in the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, this argument is founded on a outsiders’ right to satisfy their research interests Although segregation on Montgomery buses number of basic misconceptions. In support of his through full-time immersion. ended in 1956, it took years of campaigning before incredulity, Orrell mentions Max Tegmark’s most Second, while I set out to write a more discrimination was banned in 1964. Even then, the radical multiverse, an interesting but idiosyncratic accessible account by including journal fight for civil rights continued. philosophical speculation certainly not accepted storytelling, it was never my intent to write a In the winter of 2012, social media was critical by (or even familiar to) most scientists. More to the popular account of Jalq’a life and times, where in turning a moment into a movement, giving point is the string landscape, a relatively concrete academese like “juxtaposition” and “disjunction” rise to Idle No More, the largest nationwide social structure believed to follow from the mathematics would indeed be misplaced. Development action movement in Canada since the civil rights of string theory. However, contrary to Unger and colleagues who made it through the academese movement in the 1960s. As I write in Tell Everyone, Smolin’s assertions, recent work indicates that found important insights on the theory behind the it grew from a Facebook page and a tweet into current or near-future cosmological observations— incredible knowledge systems I discovered. an indigenous-led movement that used social specifically, the detection of positive spatial Finally, I had far more to say about Morales’s media to rally and engage Canadian and global curvature—would falsify the landscape, if it is false. Bolivia than Kopecky suggests, as this excerpt publics. It is just one example of how activists have Furthermore, the theory can be used to predict reveals: “a nation must be symbolized before it appropriated social media as a space to connect, the signatures of cosmic bubble collisions: violent can be loved, imagined before it can be conceived. communicate and coordinate in previously events where two previously separate “universes” Years of oppression breed self-doubt, a reluctance unimaginable ways. collide. If these signatures are detected (and even to consider new possibility … However It is too easy to dismiss nascent movements like cosmologists are actively searching for them), this difficult the craft and art of governing will prove for Idle No More. It is part of a new wave of activism, will provide nearly irrefutable evidence for the the leaders within Bolivia’s Indigenous majority, from Occupy Wall Street in the United States, to existence of the landscape. Hence the landscape they have created an ideal—a plurinational the Indignados in Spain, to Yo Soy 132 in Mexico, is both falsifiable and makes positive and unique country and constitution—that offers long overdue where social media has been crucial in uniting predictions that could be observed—hardly possibility of a more inclusive and just future.” people around a cause. On traditional media, the “radical departure from normal mechanistic Susan Walsh such movements tend to be first neglected and science” Orrell describes. Ottawa, Ontario then dismissed. On social media, they emerge as Those scientists who take the multiverse vibrant manifestations of the passions and hopes seriously indeed do so because they believe it is Re: “Writing about Harper,” by Andrew of engaged individuals. mathematically predicted by the laws of physics. Coyne (April 2015) To argue that social media does not matter is to Faced with a seemingly fantastical prediction, suppose people can read my book, Kill the ignore how the power of sharing is transforming should researchers abandon these laws despite IMessengers: Stephen Harper’s Assault on Your how we understand and give meaning to our their tremendous success? The history of science Right to Know, and compare it with Andrew world. The urge to share is a constant in human is full of examples of scientific theories with Coyne’s polemic and draw their own conclusions. history. Technology is not going to turn us seemingly absurd implications, often vigorously I remain convinced that Harper has taken this into new beings but it does influence the way opposed by individuals who substituted their country on a revolutionary course. He has greatly we think and live. As I write in Tell Everyone, personal notions of what nature ought to be accelerated the deterioration of parliamentary “the marketplace of ideas is being reshaped by the for mathematical logic. But the conventional accountability. He has delegitimized the media as volume, visibility, speed and reach of social media.” approach to science, using mathematical laws to an important part of the political process. He has And ideas change the world. model physical phenomena, works too well to be set out to create a sycophantic media under the Alfred Hermida abandoned. By contrast, rejecting science because control of his office (24-7). He has sought out and Vancouver, British Columbia one is uncomfortable with its implications has a destroyed the careers of public servants whose decidedly poor track record. findings have challenged this revolution. At the Re: “An Imperfect Truth,” by David Matthew Kleban same time, he has tried to recreate the Canadian Orrell (April 2015) New York City, New York identity from that of a peacekeeping nation to a “ f it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” From where Editor’s Note: Matthew Kleban’s full letter, along warrior nation. II sit, modern science is working pretty well, with “The Science Games,” David Orrell’s response, If that’s fine with Coyne, and if criticism of producing such near-magical marvels as smart can be found on the LRC website at reviewcanada. Harper’s actions generate anger and vindictiveness phones, nuclear power and space travel. Roberto ca/magazine/2015/04/an-imperfect-truth. in Coyne that manifests itself as ink on your pages, Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin’s The Singular that’s fine with me. We’re still a free country. For Universe and the Reality of Time: A Proposal in The LRC welcomes letters. We reserve the right to now. Natural Philosophy, which David Orrell reviewed, edit them for length, clarity and accuracy. E-mail Mark Bourrie attacks the fundamental scientific notion ­[email protected]. For all other comments Ottawa, Ontario that nature is governed by a set of immutable, and queries, contact [email protected].

32 reviewcanada.ca Literary Review of Canada NEW FROM CIGI PRESS ADVANCING POLICY IDEAS AND DEBATE

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